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THE  AMERICAN   COLLEGE 


A  Series  of  Papers  Setting  Forth  the  Program, 

Actiievements,  Present  Status,  and  Probable 

Future  of  the  American  College 


With  Introduction  by 

WILLIAM   H.    CRAWFORD 

President  Allegheny  College 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1915 


L.  hx^ei 


I 


COPTBIOHT,  1915, 
BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
Published  Deeember,  1915 


THE    OUINN    A    BODCN     CO.    mtM 
RAHWAY,    N.  J. 


CONTENTS 

CBAFTEB  PAOS 

iNTKODtrCnOK V 

I.    The  Aim  and  Scope  of  the   New  Ekglaxd 

College     3 

President  William  H.  P.  Fcmnce,  Brovm 

University. 

II.    The  Place  of  the  Lanoitaoes  and  LiTERATUREa 

IN  the    College  Ccbbiculum      ....      21 
Professor    Paul    Shorey,     University    of 
Chicago. 

III.  The  Place  of  the  Neweh  Humanities  in  the 

College  Cubeicitlum 41 

Dean     Charles     H.     Haskins,     Harvard 
University. 

IV.  The    Place   of  the   Phtsical  and   Natuhal 

Sciences  in  the  College  CuRRictrLUM  .       .       59 
Professor   Edwin   Q.   Conklin,   Princeton 
University, 

V.    The   College   as  a  Phepahation   for  Profes- 
sional Study 77 

President     Bush    Bhees,     University     of 
Rochester. 

VI.    The  College  as  a  Preparation  fob  Pracjtical 

Affairs 95 

President    Charles    F.    Thwing,    Western 
Reserve  University. 
VII.    The  Present  Status  and  Probable  Future  of 

the  College  in  the  East 105 

President    John    H.    Finley,     University 
State  of  New  York. 
ill 


iv  CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAQB 

VIII.    The  Present  Status  and  Probable  Futube  of 

THE  College  in  the  South 121 

President  William  P.  Few,  Trinity  College. 

IX.     The  Present  Status  and  Probable  Future  of 

THE  College  in  the  West 131 

President    William   F.    Slocum,,    Colorado 
College. 

X.    The   Function  of  the  College  as  Distinct 
From  the  High  School,  the  Professional 
School,  and  the  University      ....     147 
President  Alexander  Meiklejohn,  Amherst 


XI.     The  American  College  in  the  Life  of  the 

American  People 171 

Com,missioner  Philander  P.  Claxton,  Bu- 
reau of  Education,  Washington. 


INTRODUCTION 

The  chapters  included  in  this  volume  comprise 
the  papers  read  at  a  Conference  on  the  American 
College  held  on  the  occasion  of  the  celebration  of 
the  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  founding 
of  Allegheny  College.  They  were  all  specially  pre- 
pared for  this  particular  event.  In  fact,  the  en- 
tire programme  of  the  conference  was  made  out 
before  anyone  was  asked  to  read  a  paper.  Careful 
attention  was  given  to  selecting  for  a  particular 
topic  the  man  who  could  speak  with  authority  on 
that  topic.  The  book,  therefore,  is  a  new  book, 
and  presents  the  freshest  and  most  comprehensive 
thought  on  the  American  college. 

In  making  up  the  list  of  subjects  not  much 
attention  was  given  to  the  early  history  of  the 
American  college  or  to  the  peculiar  conditions 
which  favored  its  early  development.  Much  atten- 
tion, however,  was  given  to  the  programme  of  the 
college,  its  curriculum,  its  present  status  in  va- 
rious parts  of  the  country,  and  its  probable  future. 
In  short,  it  was  aimed  to  include  in  the  volume  the 
essential  things  pertaining  to  the  American  college 
as  a  present-day  institution  and  as  an  institution 
of  promise  for  the  future  educational  development 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

of  America.  Before  finally  deciding  upon  the 
topics  to  be  discussed  the  advice  of  a  goodly 
number  of  the  foremost  educators  of  the  country 
was  carefully  sought  and  freely  given.  Further- 
more, each  one  of  the  scholarly  men  invited  to 
prepare  a  paper  was  asked  to  speak  out  his  mind 
freely,  and  assured  that  what  was  wanted  in  the 
conference  was  a  free,  frank,  and  open  expression 
of  the  thought  of  educational  leaders  touching  the 
college  as  an  institution  included  in  the  educational 
regime  of  our  country. 

The  conference  had  been  fairly  well  advertised 
beforehand  in  the  public  press.  The  unique  char- 
acter of  the  programme  attracted  no  little  atten- 
tion. It  was  no  surprise,  therefore,  that  nearly 
one  hundred  colleges  were  represented  at  the  open- 
ing session,  nor  was  it  a  surprise  that  the  spacious 
Ford  Memorial  Chapel  was  more  than  crowded  to 
its  capacity  at  the  closing  session.  Not  the  audi- 
ences only  but  the  interest  increased  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end.  It  was  a  matter  of  com- 
ment at  the  close  of  the  first  session  that  a  con- 
ference of  an  unusually  high  order  was  on.  The 
speakers  were  at  their  best,  and  some  of  them 
seemed  to  be  better  than  their  best.  While  there 
were  some  striking  differences  of  opinion  as  to  what 
the  college  ought  to  be,  there  was  a  fine  spirit  of 
toleration  throughout  and  much  more  substantial 
agreement  as  to  fundamentals  than  was  antici- 


INTRODUCTION  Tii 

pated.  One  speaker  who  made  a  strong  plea  for 
the  place  of  the  physical  and  the  natural  sciences 
in  the  college  curriculum  showed  his  catholic  spirit 
in  sajing :  "  No  education  is  liberal  which  does  not 
introduce  one  to  the  world's  best  thought  and  life. 
A  purely  classical  education  and  a  purely  scientific 
one  are  equally  illiberal.  A  liberal  education  is 
broad,  disciplinary,  and  useful;  it  educates  head, 
heart,  and  hand ;  it  must  include  literature,  science, 
and  the  humanities;  it  must  fit  for  contact  with 
the  world  along  many  lines ;  it  must  help  one  to  find 
himself  and  to  choose  his  work;  it  must  prepare 
for  the  largest  usefulness  and  enjoyment."  An- 
other speaker  whose  responsibility  was  to  plead  for 
the  humanities  said :  "  The  great  defect  with  Amer- 
ican college  education  is  that  it  does  not  set  the 
mass  of  students  intellectually  on  fire.  Our  col- 
leges are  only  in  an  imperfect  degree  intellec- 
tual institutions.  The  real  rivalry  is  not  between 
classics  and  sociology,  between  history  and  chemis- 
try, but  a  struggle  with  ignorance,  materialism, 
and  superficiality  for  the  development  of  the  in- 
tellectual life.  .  .  .  Some  of  us  would  prefer  to 
see  students  roused  by  literature,  others  by  science, 
others  by  economics,  but  the  main  thing  is  that 
they  be  roused." 

The  European  war  was  touched  upon  by  sev- 
eral of  the  speakers.  President  Rhees  referred  to 
the   so-called  "  biological   defense  '*   of  the  war. 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

"  The  tragedy  of  that  argument,"  said  he,  "  is  its 
false  analogy,  its  blindness  to  what  fitness  and 
progress  have  come  to  mean  in  the  unfolding  of  hu- 
man history."  Professor  Conklin  seized  the  op- 
portunity to  make  stronger  his  case  by  saying: 
"One  of  the  slight  compensations  for  the  world 
war  which  is  now  raging  is  that  we  are  likely  to 
hear  less  in  the  future  of  that  much  abused  word 
'  culture.*  For  half  a  century  it  has  been  a  word 
to  conjure  with,  especially  in  academic  circles,  but 
it  has  never  had  any  constant  meaning  except  that 
of  self-conscious  and  rather  intolerant  superiority. 
As  a  result  every  cult  or  social  group  or  institution 
or  nation  has  defined  the  word  so  as  to  include 
itself  and  to  exclude  the  rest  of  the  world."  Dean 
Haskins  added  to  the  strength  of  his  plea  for  the 
newer  humanities  by  the  suggestive  statement: 
"  The  present  European  war  has  shown,  by  im- 
pressive and  even  tragic  examples,  that  the  days 
of  our  national  isolation  are  over  and  that  we  can 
no  longer  refrain  from  following  closely  those 
movements  of  world  politics  to  which  the  United 
States  has  been  so  long  indifferent." 

If  there  was  doubt  in  the  minds  of  any  who 
attended  the  conference  as  to  the  present  status 
and  probable  future  of  the  college  in  the  West,  the 
doubt  vanished  before  the  striking  and  almost 
colossal  array  of  facts  presented  in  the  reports 
from  seven  typical  colleges  by  President  Slocum. 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

His  argument  would  have  been  even  stronger  if  the 
limits  of  his  paper  had  permitted  him  to  mention 
a  dozen  other  institutions  within  the  same  area, 
all  of  which  are  included  in  the  list  of  one  hundred 
and  eighteen  institutions  recommended  to  the 
KulttLS  Ministerium  of  Prussia  by  the  Association 
of  American  Universities, — such  institutions  as 
Ohio  Wesleyan,  Kenyon,  Lawrence,  Lake  Forest, 
Wabash,  DePauw,  Cornell,  and  Drake. 

Perhaps  the  most  striking  difference  of  opinion 
was  shown  in  the  description  of  the  original  pur- 
pose of  the  American  college.  The  difference 
centered  about  the  words  "  cultural "  and  "  voca- 
tional." Even  here  there  seemed  to  be  a  disposition 
to  see  the  other's  point  of  view.  A  gentleman 
whose  judgment  is  to  be  respected  described  the 
positions  of  two  of  the  speakers  on  this  wise :  "  Dr. 

A.  fears  that  any  man  who  uses  the  term  *  voca- 
tion '  has  surrendered  to  utilitarianism,  while  Dr. 

B.  fears  that  any  man  who  uses  the  term  '  culture ' 
apart  from  purpose  may  be  working  in  a  vacuum.*' 

One  of  the  noticeable  and  significant  things 
about  the  conference  was  the  strength  and  virihty 
of  the  utterances.  There  was  no  attempt  to  cover 
up.  On  the  contrary  there  was  a  straightforward 
and  open  facing  of  the  facts,  with  an  appeal  almost 
prophetic  for  the  things  which  make  for  life  and 
character.  Here  is  a  sample  from  the  paper  of 
President  Meiklejohn:  "So  far  as  we  can  bring 


X  INTRODUCTION 

it  about  the  young  people  of  our  generation  shall 
know  themselves,  shall  know  their  fellows,  shall 
think  their  way  into  the  common  life  of  their 
people,  and  by  their  thought  shall  illumine  and 
direct  it.  If  we  are  not  pledged  to  that,  then  we 
have  deserted  the  old  standard;  we  are  apostates 
from  the  faith.  .  .  .  We  pledge  ourselves  to  a 
study  of  the  universal  things  in  human  life,  the 
things  that  make  us  men  as  well  as  ministers  and 
tradesmen.  We  pledge  ourselves  forever  to  a 
study  of  human  living  in  order  that  living  may 
be  better  done.  We  have  not  yet  forgotten  that 
fundamentally  the  proper  study  of  mankind  is 
Man."  A  fitting  paragraph  to  put  alongside  this 
is  from  the  closing  part  of  President  Finley's 
paper :  "  If  this  multiple  college  is  to  be  merely  or 
chiefly  a  place  of  discipline,  then  its  tasks  might 
better  be  given  over  to  the  high  schools,  to  the 
gymnasia.  If  it  is  to  be  a  place  of  special  prepa- 
ration for  life,  then  it  would  better  give  way  to 
the  professional,  the  technical  school,  the  univer- 
sity. If  it  is  to  be  a  place  merely  through  which 
to  attain,  in  an  agreeable  way,  social  position  and 
conventional  culture,  to  take  part  in  contests  of 
bodily  strength  and  skill,  or  to  enjoy  only  the  com- 
panionships and  friendships  of  living  (that  is,  if  it 
is  to  be  a  great  college,  country  or  city,  club),  it 
is  perhaps  hardly  worth  preserving  as  an  American 
institution.    But  if  it  is  to  be  for  the  many  (what 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

it  has  been,  thank  God,  for  the  few),  if  it  is  to  be 
for  all  the  fit,  a  place  of  understanding,  of  rebirth, 
of  entering  the  race  mind,  then  is  the  college 
which  I  see  in  prospect  the  most  precious  of  all  our 
educational  possessions." 

The  above  quotations  are  included  in  this  intro- 
duction with  a  twofold  purpose :  First,  to  indicate 
the  general  scope  and  spirit  of  the  papers  pre- 
sented; and,  second,  to  whet  the  appetite  of  the 
reader  for  what  follows.  If  the  atmosphere  which 
pervaded  the  conference  shall  pervade,  even  in 
some  small  measure,  the  printed  page,  it  is  con- 
fidently believed  that  this  volume  will  be  regarded 
as  a  real  and  valuable  contribution  to  the  literature 
of  the  American  college. 

William  H.  Crawford. 
Meadville,  Pennsylvania. 
August  12,  1915. 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE 


THE  AIM  AND  SCOPE  OF  THE 
NEW  ENGLAND   COLLEGE 

PRESIDENT  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

The  story  of  the  New  England  college  is  a  story 
of  heroism  and  loyalty  unsurpassed  in  American 
life.  It  has  an  epic  quality  which  lifts  it  far 
above  any  bare  chronicle  of  events.  It  sings  not 
of  arms  and  the  hero,  but  of  heroes  who,  unarmed 
and  unsupported,  devoted  their  lives  to  the  good 
fight  for  the  education  of  the  generation  to  come. 
It  is  part  of  the  story  of  Plymouth  Rock  and 
Bunker  Hill.  To-day  colleges  flourish  in  all  our 
commonwealths,  buildings  and  endowments  multi- 
ply. But  on  anniversary  occasions  it  is  good  for 
us  to  remember  that  we  of  the  present  generation 
are  in  a  land  full  of  wells  which  we  digged  not, 
vineyards  and  olive  trees  which  we  planted  not. 

The  original  aim  of  the  New  England  college  is 
stated  in  a  tablet  on  the  West  Gate  of  Harvard 
University :  "  After  God  had  carried  us  safe  to 
New  England  and  we  had  builded  our  houses,  pro- 
vided necessaries  for  our  livelihood,  reared  con- 
venient places  for  God's  worship,  and  settled  the 
civil  government,  one  of  the  next  things  we  longed 

3 


4  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

for  and  looked  after  was  to  advance  learning  and 
perpetuate  it  to  posterity,  dreading  to  leave  an 
illiterate  ministry  to  the  churches,  when  our  pres- 
ent ministers  shall  lie  in  the  dust."  In  that  sen- 
tence we  have  the  historic  order  of  the  Puritan 
life:  first,  the  building  of  houses  to  shelter  the 
newcomers  from  the  inclement  sky;  then  the  pro- 
curing of  necessary  food;  then  the  provision  for 
common  worship ;  then  the  election  of  magistrates 
to  execute  the  laws.  Next  came  education,  as  a 
thing  not  only  "  longed  for,"  but  "  looked  after  " 
in  very  practical  fashion.  And  the  reason  why 
those  men  desired  learning  was  not  for  its  con- 
solations and  delights,  not  because  of  the  satis- 
faction it  might  bring  to  intellectual  curiosity,  but 
because  of  its  concrete  value  in  equipping  the  new 
colony  through  all  the  future  with  competent  re- 
ligious teachers  and  guides.  The  college  was  thus 
bom  of  the  Christian  faith,  intended  to  serve  for 
the  maintenance  of  that  faith,  and  its  aim  was 
not  abstract  culture,  or  scientific  research,  or  the 
increase  of  human  knowledge,  but  the  equipment 
of  men  for  their  life  work. 

On  the  records  of  the  ancient  church  in  Provi- 
dence, in  whose  meeting-house  Brown  University 
holds  its  annual  commencements,  is  this  suggestive 
entry  of  1774 :  "  Voted,  to  build  a  meeting-house 
for  the  public  worship  of  Almighty  God,  and  also 
to  hold  Commencement  in."    Again  the  same  pur- 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE        5 

pose  appears  in  the  linking  of  education  and  re- 
ligion. The  delight  in  learning  for  its  own  sake, 
which  marked  the  Renaissance  in  Europe,  played 
small  part  in  our  colonial  history.  The  solving 
of  physical  or  metaphysical  problems,  which  was 
the  goal  of  the  schoolmen,  was  not  the  aim  of  our 
fathers.  To  them  learning  was  not,  in  Bacon's 
phrase,  "  a  terrace  for  a  wandering  and  variable 
mind  to  walk  up  and  down  with  a  fair  prospect " ; 
it  was  equipment  for  a  religious  vocation,  it  was 
the  development  of  men  fitted  for  leadership  in 
times  of  stress  and  danger.  The  General  Assembly 
of  Connecticut  in  1753  declared  "  that  one  prin- 
cipal and  proposed  end  in  erecting  the  college  was 
to  supply  the  churches  in  this  country  with  a 
learned,  pious,  and  orthodox  ministry." 

The  founding  of  the  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, under  the  influence  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
had,  of  course,  a  very  different  motive.  The  later 
establishment  of  the  University  of  Virginia  re- 
flected the  ideals  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  which  were 
hardly  those  of  the  founders  of  the  Puritan  the- 
ocracy. But  in  New  England  all  the  earlier  col- 
leges were  the  offspring  of  religious  faith.  The 
motto  of  Harvard, — Chris  to  et  ecclesice, — and  of 
Yale, — Lux  ac  Veritas, — and  of  Brown, — /;*  Deo 
speramus, — all  affirm  the  religious  motive  behind 
the  New  England  enterprise. 

Our  oldest  colleges  were  thus  both  religious  in 


6  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

motive  and  vocational  in  aim.  But  the  vocation 
for  which  thej  prepared  men  was  one  of  the  broad- 
est and  most  fundamental  character.  The  Puritan 
preacher  was  conceived  to  be  an  authority  on  the 
deepest  problems  of  this  world  and  that  which  is 
to  come.  He  was  the  chief  expounder  of  a  long 
sacred  history,  embodied  in  a  varied  literature,  and 
of  an  elaborate  religious  philosophy  buttressed  by 
that  literature.  He  was  also  the  chief  orator  on  all 
public  occasions,  he  was  social  arbiter,  political 
adviser,  leader  of  civic  life,  and  in  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut  he  was  an  officer  of  the  state. 
Such  a  man  must  have  no  mere  technical  training. 
He  must  be  made  to  grapple  with  philosophical 
problems,  be  versed  in  the  languages  in  which  such 
problems  were  discussed,  and  must  possess  such 
power  of  reasoning,  of  judgment,  of  expression, 
as  should  equip  him  for  his  broad  and  varied  task. 
Mere  "bread-and-butter  studies"  were  no 
preparation  for  such  a  life.  Mere  technical  train- 
ing, narrow  in  horizon  and  illiberal  in  spirit,  was 
beside  the  mark.  The  founders  of  our  early  col- 
leges certainly  did  not  conceive  of  them  as  "  divin- 
ity schools,"  in  which  men,  already  educated, 
might  acquire  the  technique  of  a  profession. 
Probably  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  studies 
pursued  in  those  colleges  had  no  direct  bearing  on 
the  clerical  calling — ^just  as  seventy-five  per  cent, 
of  the  studies  pursued  at  West  Point  to-day  have 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE        7 

no  exclusive  bearing  on  the  soldier's  profession. 
But  the  founders  of  our  New  England  colleges, 
while  broad  in  their  horizon,  were  definite  in  their 
aim.  To  them  a  "  vocation  "  was  something  divine, 
and  to  prepare  men  for  the  high  calling — the 
highest  on  earth  they  conceived  it  to  be — was  a 
noble  and  heroic  enterprise.  If  the  word  "  voca- 
tional "  has  in  our  day  acquired  a  narrower  mean- 
ing, it  is  time  to  rescue  it  from  degradation.  Vo- 
cational training  for  the  broadest  and  finest  of 
human  vocations — such  was  the  ideal  of  the  early 
New  England  college. 

But  such  training,  it  was  held  from  the  very  be- 
ginning, might  be  useful  for  many  other  men 
whose  task  was  of  broad  or  general  character. 
Thus  the  charter  of  Yale  speaks  of  "  fitting  youth 
for  public  employment  both  in  church  and  civil 
state."  It  was  early  held  that  what  was  good  for 
the  minister  was  good  also  for  the  prospective 
lawyer  or  teacher  or  even  physician.  Gradually 
the  constituency  of  the  college  widened,  and  then 
the  curriculum  widened  necessarily  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  new  constituency.  Gradually  there 
grew  up  the  ideal  of  general  culture,  apart  from 
any  vocational  aim,  as  the  true  end  and  purpose  of 
the  college.  Latin,  no  longer  essential  to  success 
in  life,  was  retained  in  the  nineteenth  century  on 
grounds  of  disciplinary  and  cultural  value.  Greek, 
no  longer  necessary  for  professional  equipment, 


S  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

was  retained  for  its  linguistic  and  literary  value; 
while  mathematics,  almost  ignored  at  first,  acquired 
large  place  as  a  training  in  exactness  and  in  rea- 
soning power,  which  could  not  fail  to  deepen  and 
strengthen  the  mind.  Gradually  thus  the  voca- 
tional aim  was  merged  in  the  disciplinary  aim, 
and  that  "  culture  "  which  to  the  first  founders 
was  only  a  by-product  of  comprehensive  prepara- 
tion for  life  was  exalted  as  the  be-all  and  end-all 
of  the  college  course.  At  the  same  time  the  theo- 
logical element  in  the  old  curriculum  was  abbrevi- 
ated, and  more  of  the  humanities, — history  and 
"  polite  literature," — was  introduced.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  for  the  last  hundred  years  the 
New  England  college  has  been  the  citadel,  not  of  a 
definite  training,  but  of  a  humane  culture  which 
has  exalted  "  useless  studies  "  and  sought  simply 
to  make  every  student  a  citizen  of  the  intellectual 
world.  It  has  sought,  in  President  Stryker's 
phrase,  "  not  to  turn  steel  into  tools,  but  to  turn 
iron  into  steel." 

Our  early  founders  reproduced  the  ideal  and 
method  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Universities, 
which  have  for  centuries  aimed  to  "  man  the  Brit- 
ish Empire."  They  also  brought  from  England 
the  idea  of  a  college  as  a  place  of  residence,  where 
boys  might  eat  and  worship  and  learn  and  live  to- 
gether under  the  strict  and  constant  supervision 
of  their  teachers.     In  sharp  distinction  from  the 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE        9 

medieval  universities  of  the  continent,  where  stu- 
dents migrated  from  place  to  place  and  teacher  to 
teacher,  was  the  common  residence  required  in  the 
New  England  college,  accompanied  by  long  lists  of 
rules,  enforced  by  tutorial  vigilance  and  some- 
times by  corporal  punishment.  A  common  eating- 
place  was  deemed  essential.  Daily  chapel,  usually 
held  twice  a  day,  brought  the  entire  family  to- 
gether, and  offered  opportunity  for  paternal  coun- 
sel and  for  the  practice  of  the  students  in  public 
speech.  At  night  the  long  corridors  of  the  dormi- 
tory were  often  patrolled  by  professors,  and  some 
New  England  colleges  adopted  the  rule  In  force  at 
Princeton,  whereby  a  professor  might  announce  his 
presence  outside  a  student's  door  by  a  peculiar 
stamp  of  his  foot,  which  all  students  were  forbid- 
den, under  severe  penalties,  to  counterfeit. 

Under  such  a  regime  the  college  was  strictly 
in  loco  parentis  in  an  age  when  parents  were  sel- 
dom accused  of  laxity  in  discipline.  Hence  the 
inner  story  of  the  colleges  is  one  of  "  autocracy 
tempered  by  rebellion."  The  teachers  were  not 
specialists,  but  men  of  breadth  of  view,  of  demon- 
strated success  in  some  calling,  and  of  dominant 
personality.  The  one  great  gift  of  the  early  col- 
leges was  the  opportunity  for  the  daily  associa- 
tion of  callow  youth  with  some  of  the  leading 
minds  of  their  generation.  When  Bowdoin  Col- 
lege had  no  laboratories,  she  had  on  her  teaching 


10  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

staff  Henry  W.  Longfellow.  When  Longfellow  in 
his  turn  was  a  student  at  Harvard  he  wrote  in  his 
diary  that  after  dining  on  boiled  rice  he  "  went  to 
walk  with  Professor  Felton."  Truly  a  dinner  of 
herbs  was  tolerable  when  followed  by  such  a  walk. 
When  Brown  University's  total  funds  had  reached 
thirty-one  thousand  dollars,  Francis  Wayland  was 
molding  her  structure,  and  the  real  endowment  of 
the  university  was  thirty-one  thousand  dollars  plus 
Francis  Wayland.  Mark  Hopkins  could  make  the 
"  old  log  "  a  real  substitute  for  library,  laboratory, 
and  apparatus,  and  the  student  whom  he  touched 
was  awed  and  thrilled  and  inspired. 

Not  only  were  the  teachers  of  that  early  day 
often  more  dominant  personalities  than  those  of 
our  own  time,  but  they  had  far  greater  opportunity 
to  enter  into  the  student  mind.  Under  the  old  uni- 
form curriculum  all  the  students  were  together  in 
every  class,  and  the  professor  met  them  all,  and 
usually  every  day.  Sometimes  one  professor 
taught  the  class  in  several  subjects,  and  President 
Hopkins  at  Williams  instructed  the  senior  class  in 
all  subjects  throughout  the  year.  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances there  was  an  intimacy  of  intellectual 
acquaintance  which  has  never  been  equaled  else- 
where. The  total  weight  of  all  a  teacher's  experi- 
ence, knowledge,  conviction,  was  brought  to  bear 
on  the  student  who,  in  significant  phrase,  "  sat 
under  him."    Never,  except  possibly  in  the  case  of 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE      11 

English  headmasters,  like  Arnold  of  Rugby,  has 
the  world  seen  greater  opportunities  for  education 
by  sheer  contagion  than  in  the  early  New  England 
college.  The  enforced  intimacy  surely  had  its 
defects.  The  foibles  of  the  teacher  were  obvious 
to  all.  The  natural  impulse  of  youth  to  rebel  was 
encouraged  by  artificial  and  elaborate  rules,  with 
fines  and  penalties  attached.  But  education  by 
contagion,  by  persistent  association  of  persons, 
has  seldom  had  so  fine  a  chance  as  it  had  among 
the  New  England  hills. 

If  architecture  is,  as  it  has  been  called,  "  frozen 
music,"  certainly  college  architecture  may  be 
called  congealed  philosophy  of  life.  The  beautiful 
quadrangles  of  Oxford,  surrounded  by  closely  ar- 
ticulated buildings  of  the  Gothic  order,  speak 
clearly  of  the  compactness  and  unity  of  a  life  in 
which  state  and  church  are  indissolubly  bound  to- 
gether and  both  are  exponents  of  order  and  beauty. 
No  such  quadrangles  were  built  in  New  England. 
The  only  one  ever  projected  was  never  completed. 
In  the  Puritan  college  each  building,  independent, 
isolated,  seems  to  recognize  no  other  structure  on 
the  horizon.  Each  one  delights  to  express  the 
independent  action  of  some  donor,  the  independent 
taste  of  some  period,  or  the  autocratic  choice  of 
some  administrator.  The  "  muses'  factories,"  as 
Lowell  called  the  old-time  dormitories,  were  not  the 
abodes  of  art  or  music  or  aesthetic  taste.     They 


12  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

sometimes  became  mere  barracks,  with  no  refining 
or  softening  influence  on  their  inmates.  In  1878  I 
lived  in  such  barracks,  bringing  all  water  from  the 
college  pump  up  three  flights  of  stairs  to  my  room, 
and  each  morning  depositing  hot  coals  and  ashes 
from  my  little  stove  upon  the  wooden  floor  in  a 
corner  of  the  hallway  outside  my  door.  Life  was 
bare  and  chill  and  unadorned  amid  such  surround- 
ings, but  it  furnished  daily  opportunity  for  the 
constant  impact  of  strong,  mature  personalities  on 
the  unformed  lives  around  them.  Over  each  New 
England  college  might  have  been  written  the  an- 
cient sentence :  "  Let  us  make  man."  The  aim  was 
not  to  push  out  the  bounds  of  knowledge  in  any 
line,  but  so  to  associate  the  strong  with  the  weak 
that  the  strength  might  be  infused  and  imparted. 

What  now  shall  we  say  of  the  more  recent  de- 
velopment of  the  New  England  college?  How  far 
is  it  true  to  its  primal  impulse,  and  how  far  is  it 
being  modified  by  the  new  occasions  which  teach 
new  duties  .f* 

The  relation  of  the  college  to  the  Christian 
faith  is  still  vital,  but  is  expressed  in  entirely  new 
ways.  Most  of  our  colleges  are  now  free  from 
denominational  control,  and  the  relations  of  church 
and  college  are  simply  those  of  vital  sympathy  and 
co-operation.  There  is  nothing  in  the  charters  of 
Yale,Amherst^Williams,Bowdoin,  or  Dartmouth  to 
anchor  those  institutions  to  the  Congregationalist 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE      13 

churches  that  gave  them  birth.  If  those  churches 
should  lose  their  interest  in  education  or  should 
become  numerically  feeble,  undoubtedly  those  col- 
leges would  drift  into  vital  relations  with  other 
denominations.  They  exist  not  for  the  aggrandize- 
ment of  the  Congregationalist  churches,  not  for 
propagating  a  doctrinal  viewpoint,  but  as  the  free- 
will offering  of  the  churches  to  the  cause  of  Chris- 
tian education.  The  old  days  when  every  teacher 
at  Yale  must  sign  the  Westminster  Confession  and 
look  carefully  after  the  orthodoxy  of  the  students 
have  gone  forever.  But  has  Christianity  lessened 
its  hold  in  consequence?  On  the  contrary,  those 
days  of  creed  subscription  on  the  part  of  every 
teacher  were  the  days  when  French  infidelity  was 
rampant  in  American  colleges  and  students  called 
one  another  by  the  names  of  Voltaire  and  Paine 
and  Bolingbroke.  At  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  only  two  students  could  be  found 
in  one  New  England  college  who  could  call  them- 
selves Christians.  The  orthodoxy  enforced  from 
above  had  produced  by  natural  reaction  complete 
skepticism  below. 

To-day  at  Wesleyan,  Colby,  and  Brown  there 
are  still  some  denominational  restrictions  that  sur- 
vive, but  they  grow  more  attenuated  year  by  year 
and  by  natural  evolution  will  disappear.  Yet  the 
Christian  forces  in  these  institutions  are  not  less- 
ened but  rather  are  growing.     Skepticism  is  no 


14  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

longer  the  badge  of  culture  among  undergraduates. 
In  almost  all  our  colleges  the  majority  of  the 
students  are  church  members  and  are  not  ashamed 
of  their  faith.  The  foremost  preachers  of  the 
country  visit  these  colleges  for  a  single  service  or 
for  a  residence  of  from  one  to  three  weeks.  Chris- 
tian associations,  supported  by  alumni  contribu- 
tions, exist  in  all  of  them,  and  the  secretaries  are 
often  able  leaders  of  student  opinion.  The  stu- 
dents are  organized  into  committees  for  philan- 
thropic, educational,  and  religious  work  in  the 
communities  around  them.  If  the  devotional  meet- 
ings have  dwindled  within  the  college,  as  they  have 
without,  the  expression  of  Christian  faith  in  prac- 
tical human  helpfulness  has  grown  more  pro- 
nounced. 

At  several  New  England  colleges  this  last  win- 
ter a  series  of  special  meetings  has  been  held, 
intended  to  move  the  students  to  personal  decision, 
and  has  been  attended  by  unusually  large  result- 
All  pressure  on  the  part  of  the  Faculty  has  ceased. 
Required  church  attendance  has  vanished  from 
most  of  our  colleges.  Creed  subscription  by  mem- 
bers of  the  teaching  staff  is  not  thought  of.  Re- 
ligion is  no  longer  official,  imposed  from  above; 
it  is  the  natural  expression  of  the  aspiration  of 
students  and  alumni.  And  this  unofficial  relation 
of  church  and  college  is  proving  vastly  more  fruit- 
ful in  the  maintenance  of  a  Christian  atmosphere 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE      15 

than  all  the  old  charter  provisions  for  ecclesiastical 
control.  The  experience  of  the  New  England  col- 
leges is  that  the  oversight  and  ownership  of  a 
college  by  a  denomination  is  often  wise  and  abso- 
lutely necessary  in  the  earlier  years  of  college 
history.  But  as  the  college  approximates  to  the 
university,  if  not  in  name,  at  least  in  standards 
and  ideals,  the  control  of  the  church  becomes  less 
helpful.  Denominational  control  of  a  medical 
school  or  a  law  school  is  an  advantage  to  neither 
school  nor  church. 

In  America  the  function  of  the  church  has  been 
to  initiate,  to  start  things.  Its  spiritual  energy 
has  impelled  the  church  to  establish  charities  which 
are  later  handed  over  to  the  state;  to  preach  the 
duty  of  caring  for  the  sick,  and  then  to  hand  over 
that  duty  to  the  public  hospital ;  to  lay  educational 
foundations  and  without  complaint  see  that  an- 
other buildeth  thereupon.  The  voluntary  prin- 
ciple, in  education  as  in  worship,  has  in  New 
England  been  found  to  vindicate  itself  in  the  course 
of  the  years.  If  the  churches  weaken  in  numbers 
or  influence,  then  their  influence  in  the  colleges  will 
decay.  But  if  they  increase  their  powers  in  the 
community,  if  they  send  their  ministers  into  col- 
lege pulpits,  and  their  laymen  into  the  ranks  of 
college  officers  and  helpers,  the  non-official  rela- 
tion of  church  and  college  may  prove  to  be  more 
helpful  to  both  than  any  official  control  could  be. 


16  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

Whatever  may  be  true  of  new  sections  of  our 
country,  this  is  the  lesson  to  be  drawn  from  the 
educational  experience  of  New  England.  Indeed, 
each  denomination  should  allow  those  ministers 
who  speak  in  the  college  vocabulary  to  spend  a 
considerable  portion  of  their  time  in  addressing 
college  assemblies.  Their  message  is  effective 
precisely  because  it  is  non-official.  They  have 
access  to  the  student  mind  just  because  they  are 
not  examiners  but  inspirers.  Such  preachers  find 
in  the  American  college  an  audience  more  respon- 
sive than  that  which  assembles  in  any  church,  and 
a  task  worthy  of  the  highest  human  powers.  In 
the  words  of  President  Fitch  of  Andover  Theo- 
logical Seminary :  "  One  of  the  significant  happen- 
ings of  our  day  is  the  passing  of  the  spiritual  and 
ethical  control  of  the  educated  youth  of  America 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  churches,  and  its  center- 
ing in  the  schools  and  colleges.  It  is  largely  true 
that  the  surest  and  most  effective  method  of  reach- 
ing the  noblest  instincts  of  the  choicest  men  of  the 
coming  generation  is  through  college  rather  than 
parochial  preaching."  * 

As  regards  the  vocational  element  in  education 
our  colleges  are  now  returning  to  their  fundamental 
principle.  They  are  perceiving  that  while  they 
can  never  become  professional  schools,  much  less 
trade  schools,  they  cannot  permanently  separate 
*  Harvard  Graduate  Magazine,  December,  1914. 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE      17 

culture  from  purpose.  A  purely  abstract  culture 
having  no  goal  in  real  life,  unrelated  to  the  life 
that  throbs  and  surges  outside  the  college  fence,  is 
really  an  ignis  fatuus,  and,  if  attained,  a  positive 
disqualification  for  public  service.  Scholasticism 
in  college  has  hindered  thousands  of  young  men 
from  real  achievement,  and  left  them  critical,  in- 
trospective, hesitant,  incapable  of  swift  decision 
and  whole-hearted  action.  The  problem  before  our 
colleges  is  to  return  to  the  original  idea  of  educa- 
tion as  fundamental  equipment  for  vocation,  but 
so  to  interpret  vocation  as  to  preserve  for  the  col- 
lege broad  horizons,  generous  sympathies,  insight 
into  the  best  that  the  world  has  said  or  done,  and 
profound  religious  faith. 

No  longer  do  we  prepare  men  for  the  learned  pro- 
fessions only,  but  it  is  our  teisk  to  give  the  broad- 
est training  for  highly  specialized  tasks.  We  must 
equip  men  not  only  for  pulpit  and  bar,  but  for 
mill  and  store  and  farm ;  men  who  can  earn  their 
living  without  losing  their  life.  Our  colleges  must 
see  to  it  that  the  mechanician  is  trained  in  exact 
science,  and  that  the  man  who  plants  com  shall 
understand  the  laws  of  heredity.  We  want  the 
architect  to  be  familiar  with  the  bequest  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  the  engineer  to  construct  highways  for 
human  progress,  the  mill-owner  to  care  not  only 
for  his  products  but  for  the  producers.  We  want 
the  storekeeper  to  know  something  of  the  great 


18  WILLIAM  H.  P.  FAUNCE 

trade  routes  of  civilization,  and  the  selectman  of 
the  village  to  understand  his  relation  to  Magna 
Charta  and  the  compact  signed  by  the  Pilgrims  on 
the  Mayflower.  We  want  all  modern  men  to  see 
their  daily  toil  as  a  part  of  the  task  of  rebuilding 
the  world.  We  want  the  stone-cutter  to  understand 
his  relation  to  Praxiteles  and  Michael  Angelo,  the 
farmer  to  know  something  of  Virgil's  Georgics  and 
the  songs  of  Theocritus,  and  the  school-teacher 
to  be  a  student  of  Plato's  Republic  and  More's 
Utopia.  Our  high  vocation  is  to  receive  the  torch 
of  enlightenment  from  past  generations  and  hand 
it  to  the  generations  that  follow.  A  man's  vo- 
cation is  to  be  a  good  citizen,  a  faithful  hus- 
band, a  pure-blooded  father,  a  helpful  neighbor, 
a  dynamic  in  his  community. 

One  of  Goethe's  more  far-reaching  sentences  is 
this :  *'  We  exist  for  the  sake  of  what  can  be  ac- 
complished in  us,  not  that  which  can  be  done 
through  us."  There  we  have  the  eternal  antithesis 
which  haunts  all  educational  enterprise.  Are  we 
then  divided  into  two  hostile  camps?  Shall  one- 
half  the  world  emphasize  the  things  done  through 
us,  while  the  other  half  emphasizes  achievement 
within,  exalting  culture?  The  New  England  col- 
lege affords  some  reconciliation  of  these  opposing 
viewpoints.  It  declines  to  become  a  group  of 
professional  schools.  It  declines  to  interpret  a 
man's  vocation  as  the  earning  of  his  livelihood.    It 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  COLLEGE      19 

will  never  confine  itself  to  the  technique  of  a  single 
profession.  But  it  is  equally  averse  to  a  vague 
self-culture  divorced  from  purpose.  It  affirms  that 
something  must  be  done  within  the  student  in  order 
that  something  may  be  done  through  him.  It  con- 
siders the  self-realization  of  the  student  only  a 
step  in  the  realization  of  the  entire  social  order. 
The  opening  of  the  eyes  of  the  soul,  the  intellectual 
and  spiritual  rebirth,  is  the  essential  thing  in  the 
educational  process.  But  this,  as  our  fathers 
clearly  saw,  is  never  to  be  attained  apart  from 
the  ethical  purpose  which  makes  the  culture  of  the 
individual  an  equipment  for  the  service  of  the 
state.  The  college  still  aims  to  equip  human 
beings  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  LANGUAGES 

AND  LITERATURES  IN  THE 

COLLEGE  CURRICULUM 

PROFESSOR   PAUL   SHOREY  ] 

The  chief  lesson  that  I  took  away  from  my  old 
Harvard  course  in  theme-writing  was  the  admoni- 
tion, "  Always  write  about  a  proposition,  never 
about  a  word."  It  is  a  sound  principle,  though 
systematically  ignored  by  the  most  successful  of 
American  writers,  Emerson,  and  in  what  threatens 
to  be  the  most  prolific  branch  of  American  litera- 
ture, the  literature  of  education.  The  blessed 
word  education  is  the  sole  theme  of  most  educa- 
tional discourses.  The  speaker  defines  or  sym- 
bolizes in  that  Mesopotamia  his  social  ideal,  in- 
dignantly rebukes  our  present  defection  from  it, 
and  apocalyptically  prophesies  its  speedy  real- 
ization by  the  short  cut  of  a  newly  revealed  method 
or  a  reformed  curriculum.  Ignoring  what  old 
logicians  called  the  circumstance — the  who,  which, 
what,  when,  and  whereby,  for  whom,  we  define 
education  in  the  abstract  as  preparation  for  life 
or  it  may  be  as  "  a  totality  of  co-ordinate  and 
reasoned  suggestions,"  and  then  endeavor  to  esti- 

21 


«a  PAUL  SHOREY 

mate  the  values  of  particular  methods  and  studies 
by  more  or  less  plausible  deductions  from  this  in- 
determinate ideal.  But  obviously  there  is  not  one 
education,  there  are  many  kinds  and  grades.  And 
the  value  and  significance  of  any  study  relates  it- 
self not  to  education  in  general,  but  to  some  specific 

type- 
Nothing  is  easier  than  to  praise  any  study  to 
its  lovers  and  adepts,  unless  it  be  to  demonstrate 
the  uselessness  of  any  study  to  those  who  are 
totally  ignorant  of  it.  All  men  naturally  love 
knowledge,  and  most  men,  like  Plato's  philosophic 
dog,  express  their  detestation  of  ignorance  by 
barking  at  what  they  don't  know.  Artem  non  odit 
nisi  ignarus  is  the  apt  inscription  on  the  Kaiser 
Friedrich  Museum  in  Berlin.  "  We  all,"  says  Mr. 
Chesterton,  "  have  a  dark  feeling  of  resistance 
towards  people  we  have  never  met,  and  a  profound 
and  manly  dislike  of  authors  we  have  never  read." 
To  escape  from  these  unprofitable  generalities  of 
educational  debate,  we  must  narrow  the  vague  sug- 
gestions of  a  word  to  the  definite  implications  of 
a  proposition  or  a  concatenation  of  propositions. 
This  task  is,  in  part,  accomplished  for  us  in  the 
assignment  of  our  topics  to-day.  For  a  topic  is 
something  midway  between  a  word  and  a  proposi- 
tion. The  phrasing  of  my  topic  relieves  me  from 
the  tiresome  necessity  of  reminding  you  that  I  am 
not  proposing  to  force   Greek  particles   or  old 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES      23 

French  epics  upon  the  negroes  of  Mr.  Booker 
Washington's  industrial  school,  or  to  substitute 
Latin  for  vocational  training  in  the  preparation 
for  life  of  the  seventy-five  thousand  boys  between 
the  ages  of  fourteen  and  sixteen,  whom  the  gap 
between  required  school  and  permitted  employment 
turns  loose  upon  the  streets  of  our  metropolis.  I 
don't  have  to  explain  the  value  of  literary  and 
linguistic  studies  either  to  a  Montessori  mother  or 
to  a  Professor  of  Plumbing  in  a  continuation 
school.  The  American  college  exists,  and  we  are 
not  to-day  discussing  either  its  abolition  or  the 
possibility  of  making  a  million  if  you  leave  school 
at  the  age  of  fourteen. 

To  go  to  college  at  all  is  to  decide  that  you 
can  spare  three  or  four  years  for  studies  that  are 
something  more  than  the  irreducible  minimum  of 
equipment  for  citizenship,  and  something  other 
than  the  vocational  or  professional  mastery  of  the 
breadwinning  specialty.  Our  theme  is  the  contri- 
bution of  literary  and  linguistic  studies  to  that 
type  of  education. 

Here  another  quicksand  of  futile  logomachy 
threatens  to  engulf  us,  the  obsolete  and  now  mean- 
ingless controversy  between  science  and  classics. 
Science  has  definitively  won.  I  may  deprecate  the 
extravagance  of  a  biological  colleague  who  tells  a 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  audience  that  the  whole  of  modem 
civilization  is  the  expression  of  a  single  idea,  the 


24  PAUL  SHOREY 

looking  into  nature  by  experiments.  But  even  this 
challenge  cannot  provoke  the  humanist  to  extenu- 
ate the  educational  value  of  science,  or  deny  its 
indisputable  leadership  in  modem  life.  If  these 
considerations  move  any  undergraduate  to  spe- 
cialize exclusively  in  the  physical  sciences,  if  he  is 
quite  certain  that  for  him  as  for  Darwin  science 
and  the  domestic  affections  will  meet  all  require- 
ments of  mind  and  heart  and  soul,  there  is  for  him 
nothing  more  to  be  said.  But  experience  and  the 
statistics  of  registration  show  that  for  the  ma- 
jority of  students  physical  science  alone  does  not 
suffice.  They  wish  to  study  man,  society,  human- 
ity, and  humanity's  ideals  of  beauty,  truth,  and 
goodness.  And  this  fact  at  once  converts  the 
obsolete  and  fallacious  alternative  classics  or  sci- 
ence into  the  larger  question  of  the  significance 
of  linguistic  and  literary  studies,  both  as  a  prepa- 
ration for  and  an  integral  part  of  the  study  of 
man. 

The  study  of  language  and  of  literature  are 
united  in  my  topic,  and  are  in  fact  interrelated 
and  interdependent.  They  are  not,  however,  iden- 
tical. On  the  contrary,  in  the  rivalries  of  actual 
educational  practice  they  unfortunately  may  be- 
come adversaries.  It  may  appear  poor  strategy  to 
dwell  upon  this  dissidence  while  pleading  the  com- 
mon cause.  But  the  very  existence  of  serious 
literary  study  depends  upon  the  maintenance  of 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES     25 

the  distinction.  This  statement  tells  you  that  if 
compelled  to  wear  a  label  or  fly  a  flag,  I  should  be 
found  in  the  camp  of  literature.  But  though  I 
shall  abbreviate  the  plea,  I  do  not  intend  to  betray 
the  cause  of  the  half  of  my  subject  which  appeals 
to  me  personally  the  least. 

The  place  that  the  study  of  language  holds  in 
a  rationally  ordered  college  curriculum  is  secured 
by  at  least  four  considerations:  1)  French  and 
German  are  indispensable  tools,  in  every  domain 
of  knowledge,  as  Latin  is  for  all  historical  and 
literary  scholarship.  2)  The  technical  study  of 
linguistics  has  the  same  claim  to  a  place  as  an 
option  in  the  curriculum  as  any  other  technical 
specialty.  3)  Language  is  so  inextricably  bound 
up  with  the  higher  intellectual  functions  of  man 
that  some  systematic  and  analytic  study  of  its 
structure  and  logic  is  for  the  normal  student  a 
condition  of  the  full  development  of  his  powers 
both  of  thought  and  expression.  This  discipline 
may  be  imparted  by  analytic  and  critical  study 
of  the  vernacular.  But  an  immense  experience 
proves  that  some  foreign  language,  and  preferably 
a  synthetic,  classical  language,  is  the  best  educa- 
tional instrument  for  this  purpose.  The  pure 
blufi'  of  the  assertion  that  such  generalized  intel- 
lectual discipline  is  a  superstition  of  the  apologist 
for  classics  exploded  by  modern  science  will 
merely  damage  the  reputation  of  every  psychol- 


m  PAUL  SHOREY 

ogist  who  endeavors  to  impose  it  upon  the  public. 
Diatribes  denying  all  disciplinary  and  general  in- 
tellectual values  to  the  study  of  language  may  be 
found  in  the  literature  of  controversy.  But  the 
psychologist  who  seriously  maintains  this  thesis 
only  writes  himself  down  as  incompetent  in  his 
own  specialty.  The  absolute  affirmation  that  con- 
ceptual thought  cannot  exist  without  language 
requires  qualification  and  admits  of  debate.  But 
in  practice  the  two  are  so  indissolubly  associated 
that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  develop  and  im- 
practicable to  study  the  one  apart  from  the  other. 
And  experimental  psychology,  as  soon  as  it  ap- 
proaches this  higher  aspect  of  mind,  is  compelled 
to  undertake  in  the  laboratory  with  falsifying  and 
artificial  simplifications  and  grotesquely  undis- 
criminating  acquaintance  with  the  material  in 
which  it  works  experiments  which  observant  teach^ 
ers  and  students  of  language  are  conducting  with 
greater  precision  and  subtlety  every  day  of  their 
lives. 

Lastly,  language  is  the  indispensable  key  to 
literature.  I  intend  no  illiberal  disdain  for  trans- 
lations, popular  lectures,  and  other  substitutes 
for  the  best.  But  it  cannot  be  the  chief  office  of 
the  college  to  obliterate  distinctions  and  solicit  the 
customer  to  content  himself  with  something 
"  equally  as  good."  Phonographs  and  chromos 
have  their  uses.    But  the  hearth  of  scholarship  and 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES     27 

culture  is  not  the  place  for  the  gas  log.  Only  the 
original  text  can  communicate  the  finer  shades  of 
thought,  the  harmonies  of  sound,  the  soul  of 
poetry  and  eloquence.  A  truly  intelligent  reading 
of  our  own  older  literature,  of  Tennyson,  Pope, 
and  Milton  even,  demands  of  the  speakers  of 
the  present-day  American  vernacular  a  linguistic 
study  differing  only  in  degree  from  that  which 
Latin  provides  in  a  simpler  and  more  effective 
form.  The  heresy  that  a  translation  will  serve 
as  well  as  the  original,  and  the  fallacy  that  noth- 
ing short  of  complete  mastery  of  a  language  can 
profit  by  the  original,  have  been  too  often  ex- 
posed to  merit  further  respectful  consideration. 
The  student  of  the  original  not  only  may  also 
use  translations,  but  he  is  the  only  one  who  can 
use  them  intelligently.  And  even  a  little  knowl- 
edge of  the  original  language  doubles  their  value 
for  him. 

The  place  of  linguistic  study,  then,  is  secure. 
For  the  specialist  it  is  an  end  in  itself.  For  the 
majority  it  is  an  instrument  and  a  key,  an  in- 
strument of  intellectual  discipline  and  a  key  to 
the  study  of  literature  and  the  history  of  ideas. 
Our  colleagues  in  linguistics  will  view  this  dis- 
tinction with  suspicion,  and  our  colleagues  in  gen- 
eral literature  will  be  impatient  of  it.  Neverthe- 
less it  is  vital.  Culture  and  liberal  education  must 
steer  a  safe  middle  course  between  the  rocks  of 


28  PAUL  SHOREY 

technical  linguistics  and  the  frothy  whirlpools  of 
dilettanteism.  This  topic  would  demand  a  volume 
for  itself,  a  volume  which  in  some  sort  already 
exists  in  Professor  Babbitt's  vigorous  but  partisan 
book  on  literature  and  the  American  college.  Here 
I  can  only  indicate  in  passing  what  seems  to  me 
the  formula  of  judicious  compromise.  The  domi- 
nant aim  of  collegiate  linguistics  should  be  the 
interpretation,  the  full  appreciation,  of  the  mean- 
ing of  great  literary  texts.  Limitation  to  this  aim 
will  yield  if  not  all  yet  enough  of  the  peculiar  dis- 
ciplinary values  of  linguistic  study.  More  than 
this  is  specialization  in  the  science  of  language, 
and  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  student  of 
literature  and  the  history  of  ideas,  pedantry.  Less 
than  this  is  laxity  and  dilettanteism. 

The  application  of  this  general  principle  to  the 
specific  tasks  of  a  language  classroom  demands 
some  discrimination  and  some  self-restraint  on  the 
part  of  the  instructor.  But  it  is  entirely  feasible. 
The  teacher  who  really  knows  the  language  he  pro- 
fesses to  teach  knows  or  can  ascertain  with 
approximate  and  practically  sufficient  certainty 
whether  a  given  item  of  syntax,  accidence,  etymol- 
ogy, or  lexicography  is  really  needed  for  the  in- 
telligent appreciation  of  the  authors,  or  whether 
it  merely  belongs  to  the  order  of  facts  which  help 
him  to  settle  hoti's  business,  properly  base  ou/n, 
and  perfect  his  own  private  theory  of  the  irregular 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES     29 

verbs.  No  one,  of  course,  expects  a  meticulous, 
pettifogging  consistency  in  such  discriminations. 
But  the  broad  general  principle  is  valid,  and 
should  hold  for  all  collegiate  teaching  of  lan- 
guage, except,  of  course,  that  which  is  avowedly 
practical  and  colloquial  at  one  extreme,  or  admit- 
tedly speciaHzed  for  future  students  of  linguistics 
at  the  other. 

In  all  this  we  have  taken  for  granted  that  the 
study  of  literature  takes  precedence  of  the  mere 
study  of  language,  and  is  indeed  one  of  the  chief 
constituents  and  supreme  ends  of  a  truly  liberal 
education.  What  else  could  we  do?  To  a  life- 
long student  of  literature,  to  one  who  has  the  read- 
ing habit,  the  request  for  an  apology  for  the  study 
of  literature  is  like  a  demand  for  proof  of  the 
utility  of  the  air  he  breathes  or  the  water  he 
drinks.  Life  without  letters  is  a  living  death,  he 
murmurs.  "  You  don't  play  whist,  young  man. 
What  a  sad  old  age  you  are  preparing  for  your- 
self," is  infinitely  truer  in  the  application,  "  you 
are  not  forming  the  taste  for  good  and  varied 
reading,  young  man."  It  is  impossible  in  twenty 
minutes  to  justify  an  ideal  and  a  philosophy  of 
life.  The  apologist  for  literary  study  in  the  col- 
lege can  at  the  most  remove  a  few  misconcep- 
tions and  repeat  a  few  commonplaces.  I  need 
hardly  repeat  the  well-worn  topics  of  the  consola- 
tions of  literature  and  the  praise  of  books  from 


30  PAUL  SHOREY 

Cicero  to  Richard  of  Bury,  from  Petrarch  to 
Ruskin  and  Frederic  Harrison.  Truisms  may  be 
staled  by  repetition.  They  are  not,  as  some  epi- 
grammatic prophets  of  the  up-to-date  fancy, 
thereby  converted  into  falsities.  Quotations  from 
the  eloquent  literature  in  commendation  of  books 
and  reading  would  merely  illustrate  and  adorn 
our  thesis.  They  would  not  prove  it.  An  equal 
array  of  authorities  could  be  mustered  against 
self-stultification  and  the  suppression  of  originality 
through  the  abandonment  of  the  mind  to  other 
men's  ideas.  Scientific  men  repeat  the  epigram  of 
a  great  philosopher  and  man  of  science,  that  if 
he  had  read  as  much  as  other  men,  he  would  be  as 
ignorant  as  they.  And  Hazlitt,  Emerson,  Lowell, 
and  a  long  succession  of  modern  essayists  have  re- 
written Montaigne's  essay  on  the  ignorance  of  the 
learned  and  the  futility  of  mere  bookishness.  But 
it  may  be  observed  that  they  do  not  practice  what 
they  preach.  And  Shakespeare's  "  How  well  he's 
read  to  reason  against  reading  "  hoists  them  all 
with  their  own  petard.  Lowell,  who  elsewhere 
boasts  himself  to  be  the  last  of  the  great  readers, 
was  reading  ten  hours  a  day,  pen  in  hand,  when  he 
praised  the  "  gamey  flavor  of  the  bookless  man," 
and  proclaimed  that  "  one  drop  of  ruddy  human 
blood  is  worth  more  than  all  the  distillation  of  the 
library." 

But  why  make  a  study  and  task  work  of  what 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES     81 

should  be  a  delight?  Why  force  our  tastes  and 
strain  our  apprehensions  in  conformity  to  outworn 
traditions  and  dogmatic  conventions?  An  enter- 
taining essay  of  the  witty  novelist  James  Payn  gives 
trenchant  expression  to  the  feeling  that  we  can- 
not always  live  on  the  heights,  but  must  occasion- 
ally let  ourselves  down  to  a  scrofulous  French  novel 
and  a  hammock.  The  ingenious  Mr.  Balfour  has 
made  an  acute  and  plausible  plea  for  the  second- 
rate  book  as  nearer  to  us,  and  therefore  often  more 
practically  helpful  and  instructive,  than  the  mas- 
terpiece. And  the  small  fry  of  contemporary 
story-tellers,  journalists,  and  minor  critics  inces- 
santly denounce  the  tyranny  of  the  books  that  no 
gentleman's  library  should  be  without,  insist  that 
modem  man  must  i5nd  his  chief  solace  and  enter- 
tainment in  the  literature  that  portrays  the  pass- 
ing panorama  of  the  life  that  now  is,  and  affirm 
that  we  shall  best  realize  both  the  pleasures  and 
the  profits  of  reading  by  yielding  ourselves  un- 
critically to  the  spontaneous  appeal  of  what  most 
easily  interests  and  attracts  our  relaxed  moods  and 
our  natural  taste  for  bathos.  They  might  as  well 
say  that  a  perpetual  surfeit  of  chocolate  sundae 
and  cream  cakes  will  meet  all  the  ends  of  alimenta- 
tion as  well  as  a  varied  and  substantial  diet  of 
wholesome  food.  It  is  only  the  accumulated  and 
compounded  interest  on  the  acquisitions  of  a  studi- 
ous youth  that  will  make  reading  a  lifelong  and 


n  PAUL  SHOREY 

dependable  joy  which  no  vicissitudes  of  fortune 
can  take  away. 

If  this  pleasure  were  purchased  at  some  price 
of  disciplinary  pain  in  youth,  it  would  only  follow 
the  general  law  of  life  and  education.  But  the 
popular  notion  of  the  special  distastefulness  and 
futility  of  the  schoolroom  inculcation  of  literature 
belongs  to  the  type  of  commonplaces  that  owe 
their  vogue  not  to  their  truth  but  to  their  flatter- 
ing of  ordinary  human  nature  and  their  conven- 
ience as  texts  for  the  ready  writer.  "  If  ten  gentle- 
men," says  old  Ascham,  "  be  asked  why  they  forget 
so  soon  in  court  what  they  were  so  long  learning 
in  school,  eight  of  them,  or  let  me  be  blamed,  will 
lay  the  fault  on  their  ill  handling  by  their  school- 
masters." Except  in  the  schools  of  Utopia,  all 
subjects  are  liable  to  be  badly  taught.  But  we 
specially  resent  mediocre  teaching  of  literature  be- 
cause of  the  more  poignant  contrast  there  between 
the  actuality  and  that  which  might,  or  we  fancy 
might,  have  been.  "  Farewell,  Horace,  whom  I 
hated  so,"  cries  Byron.  But  in  fact  Byron  did  not 
hate  Horace  in  the  least.  And  feeble  as  the  teach- 
ing of  language  and  literature  at  Harrow  school 
may  then  have  been,  it  was  that  and  that  only  which 
made  possible  the  wider  reading  in  the  Latinized 
literature  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies that  formed  Byron's  mind  and  informed  his 
writing. 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES     33 

"  Nothing  that  my  tyrants  knew  or  taught  I 
cared  to  learn,"  boasts  the  rebellious  Shelley  in  the 
Revolt  of  Islam.  Yet  where,  save  under  the 
tyranny  of  an  English  classical  schoolroom,  did 
he  learn  to  construe  the  ode  of  Pindar  from  which 
the  poem  takes  its  motto,  the  Lucretius  from  which 
he  drew  the  philosophy  of  Queen  Mab,  the 
^schylus  that  inspired  Hellas  and  Prometheus  Un- 
bound, the  dirges  of  Bion  and  Moschus  on  which 
he  patterned  Adonais,  the  Virgil  which  reread  in 
his  summer  walks  amid  the  Italian  hills  he  trans- 
muted into  the  Witch  of  Atlas,  the  Plato  that  was 
the  chief  inspiration  of  his  maturer  life  and  poetry, 
the  Sophocles  clasped  to  his  bosom  in  death  beneath 
the  Tyrrhene  wave?  And  Shelley  here  is  but  the 
type  of  the  ungrateful  graduates  who  denounce 
the  salutary  restrictions  of  the  schoolroom  be- 
cause they  were  sometimes  irksome  to  the  spirit  of 
youth  or  have  been  outgrown  in  maturity.  Of 
course  the  forbidden  books  seem  more  attractive 
than  the  prescribed  task  work.  And  of  course  the 
ripened  mind  discovers  meanings  in  the  old  school 
texts  which  the  schoolmaster  did  not  perceive  or 
despaired  of  imparting.  But  these  peevish  con- 
trasts afford  no  just  measure  of  the  value  of  the 
collegiate  study  of  literature.  To  judge  of  that, 
we  must  compare  the  graduate  who  has  received 
this  imperfect  initiation  with  the  utter  helpless- 
ness  and  bafflement  in  the  presence  of  a   great 


84  PAUL  SHOREY 

library  of  the  man  who  is  launched  on  the  infinite 
sea  of  literature  without  compass  or  guide,  who  has 
no  chart  in  his  memory  of  the  main  routes  and  cur- 
rents, who  has  no  conception  of  the  humanistic  tra- 
ditions and  accepted  values,  no  standards  of  refer- 
ence for  agreement  or  dissent;  the  man  who  has 
never  learned  through  the  critical  reading  under 
guidance  of  a  few  good  books  something  of  the 
principles  of  interpretation  that  are  essential  to 
the  right  understanding  of  any  book.  Col.  Hig- 
ginson  once  wrote  a  paper  entitled,  "  Ought  women 
to  learn  the  alphabet.?"  The  question  assigned 
me  to-day  is.  Ought  college  students  to  learn 
to  read.?  The  mere  "  literacy  "  of  the  statistician, 
the  ability  to  spell  out  words  and  catch  impressions 
or  prejudices  from  the  yellow  headlines,  is  not 
reading.  A  large  part  even  of  non-literary  educa- 
tion consists  mainly  in  teaching  those  who  think 
that  they  can  read  that  they  cannot.  The  study 
of  the  law,  for  example,  is  largely  the  learning  to 
read  with  nice  appreciation  of  the  force  and  bear- 
ing of  every  word  and  qualification  on  the  defini- 
tion and  determination  of  human  relations  and 
rights.  And  one-half  of  the  mastery  of  every 
science  is  the  substitution  in  a  limited  field  of  the 
exact  and  discriminating  reading  of  the  expert  for 
the  slovenly,  confused,  and  equivocal  reading  of 
the  layman.  Now  the  collegiate  study  of  litera- 
ture, the  slow  critical  reading  of  a  few  of  the 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES  35 

world's  masterpieces  under  competent  guidance, 
is  just  learning  how  to  read  the  book  of  human 
experience  outside  of  the  specialized  sciences  real 
or  imaginary. 

The  sciences  emerged  and  were  differentiated 
from  the  less  determined  thinking  of  Greek  philos- 
ophy, and  now  that  our  faith  in  absolute  meta- 
physics is  gone,  the  sciences  merge  and  find  their 
limit  in  the  vast  ocean  of  common  sense  and  hu- 
manistic tradition  of  which  the  world's  best  liter- 
ature is  the  expression.  Literature  is,  so  to  speak, 
the  residuary  legatee  of  all  the  stores  of  experi- 
ence, the  discriminations  of  thought,  the  aesthetic 
sensibilities  that  science  has  not  yet  been  able  to 
catalogue,  subdue,  systematize,  administer,  and 
annex.  The  serious  and  sincere  study  of  great 
literature  not  only  serves  to  develop  and  refine  sen- 
sibilities which  exclusive  devotion  to  the  discipline 
of  physical  science  may  leave  to  atrophy,  but  it  is 
the  best,  the  only  sure  corrective  to  the  chief 
source  of  modern  fallacy,  the  preposterous  and 
premature  claims  of  the  inchoate  and  as  yet 
pseudo-sciences.  We  all  acknowledge,  even  when 
we  do  not  greatly  esteem,  the  first  service.  Every- 
body recognizes  that  four  years  in  a  chemical 
laboratory  may  not,  in  Matthew  Arnold's  classical 
example,  teach  a  boy  that  "  Can  you  not  wait 
upon  the  lunatic  "  is  not  a  felicitous  equivalent  of 
"  Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased." 


86  PAUL  SHOREY 

Or  to  adopt  and  adapt  from  Mr.  Bailey's  recent 
book  on  Milton  a  less  obvious  illustration,  a  man 
may  be  able,  as  Renan  complimented  Pasteur  on 
doing,  to  distinguish  unfailingly  the  right  hand 
acid  from  the  left  hand  acid  and  yet  fail  to  appre- 
ciate the  difference  between  Wordsworth's 

"  Negro  ladies  in  white  muslin  gowns  " 

and  Milton's 

"Dusk  faces  in  white  silken  turbans  wreathed." 

The  aesthetic  value,  then,  of  literary  study  is  con- 
descendingly admitted.  Its  intellectual  service, 
both  to  the  enlargement  and  the  clarifying  of  our 
thought,  is  overlooked.  Matthew  Arnold's  phrase 
about  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  is 
almost  too  hackneyed  even  for  allusion.  But  as 
Socrates  once  observed,  so  long  as  fallacies  are  re- 
peated, we  must  meet  them  with  truisms.  Goethe, 
De  Quincey,  Ruskin,  Emerson,  Arnold,  and  Morley 
in  their  attempts  to  define  literature  all  say  essen- 
tially the  same  thing.  "  Society,"  says  Emerson, 
"  has  at  all  times  the  same  want,  the  need  of  one 
sane  man  with  adequate  powers  of  expression,  to 
hold  up  each  object  of  monomania  in  its  right 
relation."  Emerson,  the  hero  worshipper,  personi- 
fies this  function  in  one  representative  man.  Ar- 
nold generalizes  it  as  culture.    "  Culture,"  he  says, 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES     87 

"  is  always  assigning  to  system  makers  and  sys- 
tems a  smaller  share  in  the  bent  of  human  destiny 
than  their  friends  like." 

Here  you  have  the  real  ground  of  the  hostility  to 
serious  literary  study  as  a  part  of  the  college  cur- 
riculum sometimes  manifested  by  the  system  mon- 
gers, the  prophets  of  pseudo-science,  the  pedagog- 
ical psychologists,  the  men  of  one  trade-mark  idea 
who  are  seeking  to  dominate  the  education  and  the 
intellectual  life  of  our  time.  Literary  culture 
resembles  travel  and  the  frequentation  of  good  so- 
ciety in  that  it  acquaints  us  with  many  ideas  and 
harmonizes  them  not  by  the  goose-step  of  a  system, 
but  through  the  give  and  take  of  civilized  inter- 
course and  the  adjustments  of  common  sense  and 
right  feeling.  It  is  not  good  for  an  idea  to  live 
alone  and  get  accustomed  to  having  its  own  way 
always.  A  small  quantity  of  gas,  physicists  tell 
us,  would  expand  to  infinity  in  a  vacuum.  And 
something  like  this  happens  to  any  lonely  little 
idea  that  finds  lodgment  in  a  vacuous  and  system- 
building  brain.  And  the  harm  extends  not  merely 
to  the  intelligence  but  to  the  feelings.  For  just 
as  water  boils  too  easily  in  a  thin  and  rarefied 
atmosphere,  even  so  does  the  little  pot  soon  hot  of 
the  sentimentalist  who  is  the  predestined  prey  of 
the  system  monger  boil  and  slop  over  at  tem- 
peratures which  only  diffuse  a  genial  warmth 
through  a  mind  restrained  by  the  circumambient  at- 


88  PAUL  SHOREY 

mospheric  pressure  of  the  world's  best  traditional 
thought.  I  should  violate  my  own  principles  if 
I  treated  metaphors  and  similes  as  arguments.  In 
the  brief  space  assigned  me,  I  could  not  even  glance 
at  many  of  the  topics  pertinent  to  my  theme.  Still 
less  could  I  prove  anything.  I  can  at  the  most 
suggest  some  of  the  ways  in  which  precision  and 
breadth  of  literary  culture  in  youth  may  serve  to 
counteract  the  chief  intellectual  disease  of  our 
time.  When  four  of  Benedick's  five  wits  go  halt- 
ing off  from  the  encounter  with  Beatrice,  we 
attribute  his  discomfiture  to  the  intuitive  quick- 
ness of  Beatrice's  woman's  wit.  But  it  is  not 
solely  Miss  Agnes  Repplier's  native  cleverness  that 
has  enabled  her  to  overthrow  in  controversy  some 
of  the  world's  most  pompous  authorities  in  social 
science,  history,  and  diplomacy,  and  make  their 
arguments  look  sick  and  silly  in  what  Lord  Mor- 
ley  calls  "  the  double  light  of  the  imaginative  and 
practical  reason."  It  is  largely  because  year  after 
year  she  has  been  steeping  her  mind  in  the  common 
sense  of  the  world's  best  books,  while  they  have 
been  reading  only  dissertations,  documents,  proto- 
cols, and  the  erudite  treatises  of  their  colleagues. 
And  to-day  the  adequacy  of  our  President  for  his 
heavy  burden,  our  restful  and  grateful  confidence 
that  he  will  never  fail  to  speak  the  sane,  con- 
siderate, and  nobly  representative  word  for  Amer- 
ica, is  mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  though  a  pro- 


LANGUAGES  AND  LITERATURES     S9 

fessor,  he  is  not  a  professor  of  a  pseudo-science, 
nor  even  a  narrowly  exclusive  expert  in  his  own 
special  field  of  so-called  political  science.  It  is  due 
mainly  to  his  lifelong  devotion  to  the  study  of 
"  mere  literature." 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  NEWER 

HUMANITIES  IN  THE  COLLEGE 

CURRICULUM 

DEAN  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

The  group  of  studies  which  I  have  been  asked 
to  represent  in  this  conference,  the  so-called  newer 
humanities,  comprehends,  as  I  understand  it,  his- 
tory and  the  various  social  sciences  of  economics, 
poHtical  science,  and  sociology.  These  differ  from 
the  natural  sciences  in  that  their  subject-matter  is 
man  and  human  society ;  they  differ  from  the  hu- 
manities in  the  older  sense  of  the  word  not  only 
in  their  newness,  but  also  in  their  immediate  rela- 
tion to  the  social  and  poHtical  life  of  the  present- 
day  world.  It  is,  indeed,  possible  to  deny  them 
the  name  of  humanities  altogether,  if  we  limit  our- 
selves to  the  narrower  and  merely  aesthetic  con- 
notation of  the  term  as  concerned  only  with  litera- 
ture as  an  art  of  beautiful  expression.  If,  how- 
ever, we  take  humanity  in  its  historic  contrast 
with  divinity  as  the  study  of  human  affairs  and 
interests  in  contradistinction  to  theology,  or 
if  we  take  it  in  its  Latin  sense  of  humane  and 
liberal  culture   {humanitas),  we  shall  find  good 

41 


42  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

■warrant  for  its  extension  to  these  more  modem 
constituents  of  a  liberal  education. 

That  these  studies  are  a  comparatively  recent 
element  in  the  American  college  is  a  fairly  ob- 
vious fact.  The  oldest  of  them,  history,  was  kept 
subordinate  to  philology  and  theology  until  well 
into  the  nineteenth  century  and  did  not  win  an  in- 
dependent place  in  our  colleges,  with  a  few  notable 
exceptions,  until  well  after  the  Civil  War.  Eco- 
nomics secured  a  foothold  somewhat  later,  political 
science  later  still.  Thirty  years  ago  a  term  in 
Guizot's  History  of  Civilization  or  Freeman's 
General  Sketch,  a  term  in  some  brief  economic 
text,  and  a  term  on  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  constituted  the  sum  and  substance  of  the 
instruction  in  this  group  of  subjects  in  a  fair 
average  of  American  colleges,  where  classics  and 
mathematics  were  still  required  and  the  natural 
sciences  already  well  established.  These  brief 
courses  were  given  by  the  president,  by  the  pro- 
fessor of  philosophy,  or  by  anyone  else  who  had  a 
vacant  period  or  a  broad  back  for  college  burdens, 
very  rarely  by  one  who  had  any  special  training 
whatever.  The  "  fourteen-weeks  "  epoch  in  Amer- 
ican education  lay  heavily  upon  all  new  subjects 
and  most  heavily  upon  the  newest. 

How  all  this  has  changed  within  a  generation  is 
a  matter  of  common  knowledge.  New  chairs  have 
been  established,  special  professors  appointed,  and 


PLACE  OF  NEWER  HUMANITIES    43 

courses  developed  with  some  freedom  and  generally 
with  wisdom.  The  process  has  gone  on  most 
rapidly  in  the  universities,  both  state  and  private, 
often  more  slowly  in  the  independent  colleges, 
where  the  tradition  of  the  older  subjects  is 
stronger  and  the  need  of  response  to  popular  de- 
mands less  immediate,  so  that  any  generalization 
must  take  account  of  the  unequal  development  of 
such  instruction  in  different  institutions.  Never- 
theless, if  these  subjects  have  not  fully  come  to 
their  own  in  all  colleges,  the  time  has  arrived  when 
we  can  take  account  of  stock  and  ask  ourselves 
what  are  their  real  claims  upon  college  authorities, 
what  is  their  place  in  college  education.  Indeed, 
these  questions  have  been  asked  many  times  al- 
ready, and  one  cannot  even  now  hope  to  give 
them  a  new  or  a  final  answer. 

We  must  first  of  all  disclaim  any  necessary  an- 
tagonism between  the  newer  humanities  and  the 
older,  or  between  the  humanities  in  general  and 
science.  No  single  group  of  studies  is  sufficient 
to  occupy  the  whole  field  of  education  for  any 
individual,  and  each  group  shades  into  the  other. 
History  has  intimate  relations  to  language,  litera- 
ture, and  the  fine  arts ;  economics  has  its  mathe- 
matical and  its  psychological  aspects;  while  the 
methods  and  the  results  of  modern  science  are  of 
ever  increasing  importance  in  the  study  of  all 
questions    which   concern   the    state   and   society. 


44  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

Much  of  the  progress  of  knowledge  in  our  gen- 
eration has  been  achieved  in  those  borderlands 
where  two  or  more  subjects  of  inquiry  meet,  and 
the  future  scholar,  as  well  as  the  general  student, 
needs  none  of  those  water-tight  bulkheads  between 
different  disciphnes  which  the  academic  world  has 
sometimes  considered  necessary  for  its  safety. 
Least  of  all  is  the  college  a  place  for  that  in- 
tellectual arrogance  and  self-sufficiency  which 
would  limit  the  really  significant  in  educa- 
tion to  Greek  or  chemistry  or  economics  or 
any  other  subject.  All  subjects  are  not  of 
equal  value,  but  no  subject  is  of  supreme  or 
exclusive  value,  and  none  can  be  wisely  studied 
in  college  or  elsewhere  apart  from  its  relation  to 
others. 

Among  the  various  studies  which  contend  in 
healthy  rivalry  for  recognition  at  the  hands  of 
students  and  of  college  authorities,  the  newer 
humanities  occupy  a  central  position,  intermediate 
between  the  older  humanities  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  natural  sciences  on  the  other.  Their  subject- 
matter  is  human,  their  method  scientific.  Taken 
broadly,  they  comprehend  the  whole  range  of  or- 
ganized human  interests  in  the  past  and  in  the 
present,  and  subject  them  to  critical  analysis  in 
the  search  for  truth.  They  cannot  experiment, 
only  in  part  can  they  observe;  dependent  upon 
indirect  methods  for  their  knowledge  of  the  past. 


PLACE  OP  NEWER  HUMANITIES     45 

whether  recent  or  remote,  they  must  employ  the 
most  penetrating  criticism  and  laborious  and  im- 
partial sifting  of  evidence.  Applying  the  critical 
and  exact  methods  of  science  to  the  rich  and 
varied  material  of  human  life,  they  appeal  to 
imagination  and  sympathy  at  the  same  time  that 
they  train  the  judgment  and  enrich  the  under- 
standing. If  our  curriculum  is  to  have  a  center 
or  core,  it  may  well  be  sought  in  this  great  con- 
necting group  of  subjects,  which,  by  joining  the 
study  of  literature  to  the  present  and  bringing  the 
student  of  nature  into  touch  with  the  world  of 
man,  furnish  a  natural  corrective  to  the  one- 
sidedness  of  a  training  which  is  purely  literary  or 
purely  scientific. 

Central  with  respect  to  the  other  subjects  of 
the  curriculum,  the  newer  humanities  are  unique 
in  their  relation  to  social  action.  It  is  their  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  that  they  deal  with  or- 
ganized society  and  especially  with  the  state,  and 
thus  constitute  the  necessary  preparation  for  in- 
telligent participation  in  social  and  civic  activity. 
They  give  a  body  of  knowledge  acquired  nowhere 
else,  and  they  are  unique  in  training  the  judgment 
upon  political  and  social  facts.  They  are  thus 
practical,  not  in  the  narrower  sense  as  leading  to 
a  livelihood,  but  in  the  larger  sense  of  preparing 
for  life.  This  preoccupation  with  practical  mat- 
ters is  sometimes  made  the  occasion  for  reproach. 


46  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

but  it  is  a  reproach  which,  if  properly  understood, 
the  social  sciences  are  quite  willing  to  bear.  "  In 
whatever  it  is  our  duty  to  act,  those  matters  also 
it  is  our  duty  to  study,"  said  Thomas  Arnold,  and 
he  cannot  be  accused  of  being  an  educational 
Philistine. 

If  all  this  seem  somewhat  abstract,  there  is  an- 
other set  of  reasons  why  the  newer  humanities 
should  have  a  large  place  in  the  curriculum, 
namely,  that  students  are  interested  in  them.  We 
may  believe  with  Mr.  Dooley  that  undergraduates 
should  study  only  what  is  "  onpleasant " ;  the 
effect  of  this  has  too  often  been  that  the  under- 
graduate refuses  really  to  study  at  all.  Whatever 
his  concern  with  more  remote  or  abstruse  themes — 
and  I  do  not  mean  in  the  least  to  disparage  their 
importance — he  is  likely,  if  he  is  normal  and 
healthy,  to  read  the  newspapers  and  to  take  an 
interest  in  what  is  going  on  about  him.  He  hear^ 
of  wars  and  rumors  of  wars,  of  social  questions 
and  political  problems,  and  he  realizes,  or  ought 
to  realize,  that  these  are  questions  which  concern 
him  and  will  depend  in  some  measure  upon  him  for 
their  solution.  In  a  democratic  society  with  active 
public  discussion,  healthy  young  men  cannot  fail 
to  want  to  know  about  the  life  of  the  world  in 
which  they  live  and  their  relations  to  it.  Given  the 
students*  interest,  it  is  the  function  of  the  college 
to  guide  and  broaden  and  develop  that  interest  un- 


PLACE  OF  NEWER  HUMANITIES     47 

til  it  eventuates  in  intelligent  citizenship  and  in- 
telligent leadership. 

This  is  a  well-worn  theme  which  ought  now  to 
require  no  elaboration,  but  I  may  be  permitted  to 
illustrate  it  in  one  of  its  aspects.  The  present 
European  war  has  shown,  by  impressive  and  even 
tragic  examples,  that  the  days  of  our  national 
isolation  are  over  and  that  we  can  no  longer  re- 
frain from  following  closely  those  movements  of 
world  politics  to  which  the  United  States  has  so 
long  been  indifferent.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not, 
we  must  prepare  to  make  decisions  on  matters  of 
grave  international  import  which  will  compel  us 
to  reconsider  traditional  policies,  to  develop  new 
ones,  and  to  examine  questions  of  war  and  peace  in 
the  light  of  actual  fact  and  not  of  sudden  impulse 
or  abstract  theory.  Such  a  crisis  finds  us  as  a 
people  extraordinarily  ignorant  of  history,  of  in- 
ternational law,  and  of  those  economic  conditions 
which  shape  international  policies ;  and  it  finds  us 
even  more  deficient  in  an  international  habit  of 
thought  and  in  the  sense  for  foreign  aif airs.  In  the 
formation  of  an  enlightened,  just,  and  far-sighted 
public  opinion  in  international  matters  the  colleges 
must  take  the  lead.  The  response  during  the 
present  year  to  courses  and  special  lectures  bear- 
ing upon  these  subjects  shows  that  our  students 
are  ready  to  do  their  part,  but  much  remains  to  be 
done  from  the  side  of  college  authorities  to  guide 


48  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

and  deepen  this  interest  in  the  direction  of  a 
sane  and  intelligent  international-mindedness.  It 
is  particularly  upon  the  departments  of  history, 
government,  and  economics  that  this  new  obliga- 
tion falls,  and  it  is  a  national  duty  to  give  them 
adequate  opportunities. 

I  am  well  aware  that  there  is  an  obvious  danger 
in  the  over-emphasis  of  the  immediate  and  the 
actual,  and  that  we  are  already  beginning  to  see  a 
certain  thinness  and  lack  of  depth  in  some  of  our 
instruction,  particularly  on  the  side  of  applied 
economics,  sociology,  and  descriptive  political  sci- 
ence. Some  college  instructors  in  these  fields  lack 
perspective  and  breadth  and  thoroughness  of  train- 
ing, and  it  is  not  surprising  that  their  defects  are 
magnified  in  their  students  to  the  point  of  con- 
tempt for  the  past  and  its  contributions  to  culture, 
and  of  a  blind  faith  in  the  saving  virtue  of  mere 
information  in  political  and  social  matters.  The 
narrowness  of  the  supposedly  practical  is  in  the 
long  run  more  dangerous  than  the  narrowness  of 
the  idealist,  since  this  can  always  be  in  some  meas- 
ure corrected  by  contact  with  the  everyday  world 
of  later  life,  while  the  outlook  and  vision  which 
one  misses  in  college  days  are  generally  lost  for 
good.  "  Why,"  it  may  be  asked,  "  spend  the 
precious  time  of  the  college  upon  the  contents  of 
the  newspapers  and  magazines?  If  our  students 
study  the  same  problems  as  the  man  in  the  street, 


PLACE  OF  NEWER  HUMANITIES     49 

what  doth  it  profit  them  to  go  to  college  ?  Let  us 
subscribe  for  more  periodicals  and  put  the  boy  to 
work !  "  The  answer  to  this  lies  not  in  a  different 
subject-matter  but  in  a  different  treatment.  The 
social  sciences  must  be  approached,  not  as  material 
for  a  momentary  sensation  or  occasional  debate, 
but  as  requiring  thorough  study  and  hard  thinking 
and  as  needing  to  be  seen  in  their  larger  relations 
to  human  experience.  Against  the  treatment 
which  is  merely  informational  and  descriptive 
must  be  set  the  careful  analysis  of  scientific 
economics  and  the  science  of  government;  undue 
absorption  in  the  ever-insistent  but  fugitive  pres- 
ent must  be  prevented  by  the  enlarging  and  hu- 
manizing study  of  the  thought,  the  literature  and 
the  achievements  of  the  past. 

Fortunately,  through  the  study  of  history  the 
newer  humanities  can  supply,  from  their  own 
ranks,  the  corrective  to  many  of  these  evils.  His- 
tory offers  not  only  a  body  of  information  con- 
cerning the  past  life  of  the  race,  but  also  a  method 
of  inquiry  upon  which  the  social  sciences  rest,  and 
a  genetic  point  of  view  by  which  the  present  can 
be  measured  and  understood  in  its  relations  to  the 
past  out  of  which  it  has  come.  History  stirs  the 
student's  imagination,  steadies  his  judgment,  and 
serves  as  the  intermediary  between  literary  studies 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  social  sciences  on  the 
other.    The  time  has  come  when  we  might  as  well 


60  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

admit  frankly,  however  much  we  may  deplore  the 
fact,  that  for  the  great  body  of  our  college  stu- 
dents the  classics  have  lost  their  hold  as  the  basis 
of  general  education,  and  that  for  the  present  gen- 
eration the  chief  opportunity  for  giving  the  back- 
ground and  breadth  of  view  which  our  conceptions 
of  culture  still  demand  is  to  be  found  in  the  study 
of  history.  For  most  of  our  students  the  great 
avenue  to  the  feeling  and  experience  of  the  race 
lies  through  the  vital  study  of  the  historic  past, 
approached  not  as  something  dead  or  remote  but 
as  something  full  and  rich,  varied  in  its  interest 
and  many-sided  in  its  appeal,  through  which  alone 
we  can  hope  to  understand  the  present  which  it 
has  produced.  Even  in  so  modern  a  subject  as 
history,  it  is  necessary  to  resist  those  ultra-modems 
whose  historical  interests  are  circumscribed  by  the 
past  few  years  or  who,  under  the  specious  theory 
of  apperception,  would  devote  so  much  of  our  study 
to  the  recent  and  the  local  as  to  crowd  out  the 
larger  and  more  humane  study  of  the  past  and 
obscure  the  unity  and  continuity  of  its  history. 
Historical  near-sightedness  must  not  deprive  us 
of  the  base-line  which  the  remoter  past  affords 
for  an  intelligent  study  of  the  present,  and  even 
the  most  materialistic  of  historians  must,  in  dealing 
with  historical  facts,  take  account  of  their  mass  as 
well  as  of  the  inverse  square  of  their  distance.  To 
the  real  teacher  of  history  the  whole  of  the  past 


PLACE  OF  NEWER  HUMANITIES     51 

is  alive  and  no  part  is  too  remote  to  touch  the 
imagination  and  understanding  of  his  students. 

There  are  obviously  important  questions  respect- 
ing the  relations  of  the  newer  humanities  to  one 
another  as  well  as  respecting  their  collective  place 
in  the  college  curriculum,  but  in  neither  case  can 
they  receive  a  final  answer  or  one  of  universal  ap- 
plication. Much  will  inevitably  depend  upon  the 
traditions  of  the  college,  upon  its  resources,  upon 
the  personality  of  its  different  professors,  as  well 
as  upon  the  changing  position  of  various  studies 
as  instruments  of  education.  For  reasons  which 
have  already  been  indicated,  history  must  always 
be  largely  represented,  as  furnishing  the  materials 
and  the  methods  of  the  other  subjects  of  this  group 
and  as  affording  the  necessary  background  and 
connections  with  other  fields.  The  scientific  study 
of  government,  always  closely  connected  with  his- 
tory on  the  one  hand  and  with  law  on  the  other, 
has  recently  shown  a  tendency  to  emphasize  its  in- 
dependence from  history  and  its  relations  with  law. 
As  a  subject  of  undergraduate  study,  however,  its 
legal  aspects  are  of  less  significance  than  its  his- 
torical ones,  and  its  professors  have  especial  need 
of  a  broad  historical  training,  while  at  the  same 
time  they  must  be  ever  ready  to  bring  their  stu- 
dents into  touch  with  the  concrete  reality  of  actual 
government.  The  inevitable  development  of  sepa- 
rate instruction  in  political  science  must  not  be  al- 


52  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

lowed  to  obscure  its  intimate  relations  to  history. 
Economics  has  gone  further  than  political  science 
in  the  direction  of  distinct  organization  and  has 
secured  general  recognition  as  a  separate  depart- 
ment with  a  growing  body  of  instruction  and  a 
growing  appeal  to  the  American  undergraduate. 
Here  again,  however,  the  tendency  to  short  courses 
on  current  problems  must  be  resisted  by  emphasis, 
on  the  one  hand  upon  the  economic  history  which 
shows  their  genesis,  and  on  the  other  hand  upon  the 
more  scientific  and  disciplinary  aspects  of  the 
study  as  seen  in  the  analytical  processes  of  eco- 
nomic theory  and  the  exact  training  of  economic 
measurements.  The  close  connections  of  eco- 
nomics and  government  must  likewise  not  be  for- 
gotten. The  latest  arrival  in  this  group  of  sub- 
jects, sociology,  has  a  less  certain  position,  owing 
partly  to  its  newness  and  partly  to  its  vastness. 
There  are  even  those  who  insist  that  its  newness  is 
an  inherent  quality  and  that  its  vast  programme 
of  co-ordinating  scientifically  all  social  knowl- 
edge is  fundamentally  impossible  of  execution. 
Without  entering  into  this  question,  it  may  be 
suggested  that,  for  the  present,  sociology  as 
an  undergraduate  study  is  valuable  chiefly  as  giv- 
ing a  significant  point  of  view,  and  that,  until  its 
content  and  method  are  more  thoroughly  worked 
out,  undergraduates  cannot  to  advantage  substi- 
tute extended  elections  in  this  field  for  the  more 


PLACE  OF  NEWER  HUMANITIES     53 

highly  organized  and   clearly  defined  social  sci- 
ences of  economics  and  government. 

Nowhere  does  the  personality  of  the  teacher 
count  for  more  than  in  the  study  of  the  newer  hu- 
manities, for  nowhere  is  the  content  of  instruc- 
tion more  varied  and  its  methods  more  flexible.  In 
the  somewhat  ambitious  Amherst  plan  of  introduc- 
ing freshmen  to  the  whole  range  of  the  humanistic 
sciences  the  whole  responsibility  rests,  and  must 
rest,  upon  the  professor  in  charge.  No  book  or 
set  of  books  has  envisaged  that  vast  and  unsolved 
problem.  If  we  simplify  the  task  by  subdividing 
it,  the  problem  has  been  transformed,  not  solved, 
and  a  new  and  difficult  problem  of  co-ordination 
has  been  added.  The  unity  of  the  newer  humanities 
is  in  danger  of  disappearing  with  the  multiplica- 
tion of  departments  and  courses,  and  their  cultural 
value  is  correspondingly  weakened  unless  some  seri-? 
ous  counteracting  effort  be  exerted  towards  corre- 
lating the  student's  attainments  in  diverse  fields. 
It  should  be  observed  in  this  connection  that  no 
subjects  lend  themselves  better  to  some  form  of 
tutorial  instruction,  and  none  stand  in  greater  need 
of  the  co-ordinating  final  examination  at  the  end 
of  the  undergraduate  course  to  which  such  instruc- 
tion can  with  much  profit  be  directed.  If,  as  many 
of  us  believe,  the  universal  American  practice  of 
awarding  degrees  upon  the  basis  of  a  mere  ac- 
cumulation of  isolated  credits  is  wrong,  both  in 


54  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

principle  and  in  its  results,  the  evils  of  the  sys- 
tem are  greatest  in  those  subjects  where  there  is 
not,  as  in  mathematics  and  many  branches  of  sci- 
ence, a  progressive  correlation  inherent  in  the 
nature  of  the  subject,  but  where,  as  in  the  more 
descriptive  fields  of  English  literature  and  history, 
the  order  and  advancement  of  courses  is  more  or 
less  fortuitous  and  the  later  courses  do  not  de- 
pend upon  the  earlier  in  any  such  close  sequence 
of  necessary  prerequisites.  The  demand  that  the 
candidate  for  the  bachelor's  degree  show  some  defi- 
nite result  from  his  college  education  beyond  the 
scoring  of  a  certain  number  of  units  of  credit  is 
most  imperative  where  the  courses  of  the  senior 
year  do  not  involve  and  test  his  whole  previous 
training.  A  comprehensive  final  examination 
which  shall  accomplish  this  object  presupposes  a 
considerable  amount  of  co-ordinating  instruction 
for  each  student,  and  this  of  course  calls  for  addi- 
tional expenditure  of  energy  and  of  money. 

The  fact  is  that  our  teaching  of  the  newer  hu- 
manities has  been  and  is  too  cheap.  No  studies  are 
more  intimately  dependent  upon  the  library,  yet 
what  college  has  done  for  its  library  what  it  has 
done  for  its  laboratories,  or  furnished  duplicate 
copies  of  reference  books  as  it  furnishes  duplicate 
apparatus  and  laboratory  supplies,  or  provided 
assistance  and  supervision  for  its  students  in  the 
library  as  it  gives  them  without  question  to  its 


PLACE  OF  NEWER  HUlMANiTIES     65 

students  of  science?  How  many  colleges  have 
developed  professorships  of  history,  government, 
economics,  and  social  science  in  proportion  to  their 
departments  of  chemistry,  physics,  biology,  geol- 
ogy, and  astronomy  ?  And  how  far  do  we  require, 
or  permit,  in  these  departments  the  same  thorough- 
ness of  teaching  and  individualization  of  instruc- 
tion which  is  demanded  in  other  fields?  The  new 
problems  which  the  teachers  of  the  newer  humani- 
ties have  to  face  require  far  greater  resources  if 
they  are  to  be  wisely  solved  for  the  benefit  of  the 
student  and  of  the  country,  resources  of  libraries, 
of  materials  for  study,  and  above  all  of  men. 
Moreover,  the  work  of  professors  in  these  fields  is 
not  now  confined  to  college  walls,  for  they  are 
called  in  increasing  measure  to  render  service  in 
local  and  national  affairs  as  expert  advisers  and 
as  leaders  of  opinion.  Within  reasonable  limits, 
such  contact  with  the  actual  world  enriches  and 
vitalizes  the  work  of  the  classroom,  but  the  burden 
is  often  a  severe  one,  and  the  college  must  be  will- 
ing to  carry  its  share  in  this  labor  for  the  com- 
munity by  relieving  such  masters  from  academic 
routine  and  by  guarding  their  leisure  as  men  of 
learning  and  wise  counsel. 

Finally,  in  all  discussions  of  the  value  of  dif- 
ferent studies  and  their  place  in  college  education 
we  must  beware  of  proceeding  abstractly,  as  if  we 
were  dealing  with  a  hypothetical  undergraduate, 


56  CHARLES  H.  HASKINS 

without  taking  sufficient  account  of  the  different 
reactions  of  different  students  to  the  same  sub- 
ject. We  hear,  for  example,  that  the  function  of 
mathematical  training  is  to  develop  the  power  of 
abstract  reasoning,  while  we  know  that  in  a  large 
number  of  instances  it  develops  nothing  higher 
than  ingenuity.  The  delicate  power  of  literary 
appreciation  which  the  study  of  Greek  produces 
among  the  elect  few  becomes  with  others  merely  a 
matching  of  words  against  words  and  of  the  forms 
of  inflection  against  the  corresponding  sections  of 
the  grammar.  So  history  can  become  a  mere  jum- 
ble of  meaningless  dates  and  events  or  a  vague  and 
pleasant — and  often  false — notion  of  progress. 
We  must  not  forget  that  one  student's  imagination 
may  be  stirred  by  poetry,  another's  by  history, 
another's  by  engineering.  One  may  learn  thor- 
oughness and  scientific  accuracy  from  a  Greek 
grammar,  another  in  the  chemical  laboratory.  We 
cannot  guarantee  the  reactions  of  any  individual 
to  any  subject.  The  most  that  we  can  do  is  to 
place  before  him  a  sufficient  variety  of  significant 
fields  of  learning  and  a  body  of  vigorous,  alert, 
and  enthusiastic  teachers,  and  trust  to  Providence 
foT'  the  results.  If  he  is  really  stirred  and  stimu- 
lated in  any  direction,  we  ought  to  be  thankful. 
The  great  defect  in  American  college  education 
is  that  it  does  not  set  the  mass  of  students  intel- 
lectually on  fire.    Our  colleges  are  only  in  an  im- 


PLACE  OF  NEWER  HUMANITIES    57 

perfect  degree  intellectual  institutions.     The  real 
rivalry  is  not  one  between  classics  and  sociology, 
between  history  and  chemistry,  but  a  struggle  with 
ignorance,  materialism,  and  superficiality  for  the 
development  of  the  intellectual  life.    We  are  wrest- 
ling against  principalities  and  powers,  against  the 
rulers  of  the  darkness  of  this  world,  and  we  need 
help  from  every  quarter.    Some  of  us  would  prefer 
to  see  students  aroused  by  literature,  others  by 
science,  others  by  economics,  but  the  main  thing  is 
that  they  be  aroused.     The  first  business  of  the 
American  college  is  to  make  its  students  intellec- 
tually keen  about  something;  what  that  is,  is  a 
matter  of  less  moment.     Only — and  here  I  come 
back  to  the  newer  humanities — as  the  world  exists 
to-day,  many  students  are  likely  to  be  moved  only 
by  studies  which  have  some  immediate  and  obvious 
relation  to  their  own  time,  and  to  them  the  social 
sciences  make  an  appeal  which  we  cannot  and  must 
not  disregard.     It  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  take 
advantage  of  this  legitimate  interest,  to  offer  it 
food  to  feed  upon  and  wise  and  competent  guid- 
ance,   to    discipline    it    by    thorough    and    exact 
methods,   to  broaden   it  by  a  wide   and  humane 
knowledge  of  other  nations  and  other  times,  and 
to  steady  it  by  a  sane  appreciation  of  the  best 
things  that  have  been  said  and  done  in  the  world. 
So  shall  the  social  sciences  be  humane  as  well  as 
new,  human  as  well  as  scientific. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  PHYSICAL 

AND    NATURAL    SCIENCES    IN 

THE  COLLEGE  CURRICULUM 

PROFESSOR  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 


Feom  the  beginnings  of  colleges  and  universities 
down  to  the  present  time  some  form  of  what  we 
now  call  science  has  held  a  well-recognized  place 
in  every  plan  of  liberal  education.  In  the  Uni- 
versitas  Studii  Generalls  of  Paris,  which  was  the 
mother  of  modem  colleges  and  universities,  the 
"  Trivium "  included  grammar,  logic  and  rhet- 
oric, and  the  "  Quadrivium  '*  arithmetic,  geometry, 
astronomy,  and  music.  Under  the  influence  of 
Galileo  and  Newton  physics,  or  what  was  long 
known  as  natural  philosophy,  was  introduced  Into 
the   curriculum. 

Thus  mathematics,  astronomy,  and  physics  have 
been  represented  In  colleges  and  universities  from 
their  very  beginnings,  and  even  to  this  day  they 
occupy  in  many  institutions  a  more  secure  and 
more  honorable  position  than  Is  accorded  to  the 
newer  sciences  of  chemistry,  geology,  and  biology. 

59 


60  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

The  quality  of  learning  is  not  strained.  The 
spirit  of  real  scholarship  is  broad  and  eclectic  and 
great  scholars  in  all  ages  from  Aristotle  to  those 
who  sit  on  this  platform  have  had  the  open  mind, 
the  sympathetic  heart,  the  helping  hand  for  all 
branches  of  human  learning.  But  the  great  growth 
of  sciences  and  of  industries  based  upon  them  and 
the  great  demand  for  technical  education  which 
characterized  the  past  century  has  caused  many 
persons  to  fear  that  liberal  learning  is  endangered. 
And  so  there  has  grown  up  a  conflict  between  those 
who  represent  the  older  system  and  those  who  ad- 
vocate the  new  over  the  place  of  the  physical  and 
natural  sciences  in  institutions  of  liberal  learning. 

The  agitation  for  the  introduction  of  the  sci- 
ences of  chemistry,  geology,  and  biology  Into  our 
colleges  and  universities,  and  for  the  teaching  of 
aU  sciences  by  the  laboratory  method  rather  than 
by  lectures  and  demonstrations,  began  in  force 
about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Up 
to  that  time  chemistry  was  rather  a  subject  with 
which  to  amaze  the  spectator  than  a  serious  study 
to  instruct  the  student,  while  geology  and  espe- 
cially biology  were  more  frequently  taught  as 
branches  of  natural  theology  than  as  natural 
sciences. 

In  1848,  in  an  old  frame  building  on  the  Charles 
River  in  Cambridge,  Louis  Agassiz  opened  the  first 
scientific  laboratory  in  America  for  the  instruction 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  61 

of  students  by  the  laboratory  method.  His  labora- 
tory of  zoology  thus  antedated  all  other  teaching 
laboratories  in  this  country.  But  although  Agas- 
siz  taught  zoology  from  a  scientific  point  of  view 
it  was  still  generally  regarded  as  a  part  of 
natural  theology.  At  a  time  when  laboratory  in- 
struction required  justification  and  popular  sup- 
port he  said,  "  The  laboratory  is  to  me  a  sanctu- 
ary ;  I  would  have  nothing  done  in  it  unworthy  of 
the  great  Author," — truly  a  noble  and  beautiful 
sentiment,  but  an  evidence  that  science  was  still 
looked  upon  as  a  handmaid  of  religion  rather 
than  as  an  independent  subject  of  teaching  and 
research. 

And  it  was  against  this  very  conception  of  sci- 
ence as  a  subject  worthy  of  study  for  its  own  sake, 
and  worthy  of  a  place  in  the  college  curriculum 
because  of  its  cultural  value,  that  the  representa- 
tives of  the  older  systems  of  education  objected 
most  strenuously.  Mathematics  and  physics  had 
long  occupied  an  unquestioned  position  in  the  cur- 
riculum, but  the  newer  sciences  seemed  to  many 
purists  in  education  to  be  less  pure  than  the  older 
ones.  And  no  doubt  many  scientists  went  too  far 
in  the  condemnation  of  the  older  systems  of  educa- 
tion, while  many  classicists  went  too  far  in  the  con- 
demnation of  the  new.  If  advocates  of  the  newer 
learning  proclaimed  with  pride,  "  We  are  the  peo- 
ple and  wisdom  was  born  with  us,"  representatives 


62  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

of  the  older  learning  answered  with  scorn,  "  We  are 
the  people  and  wisdom  will  die  with  us." 

Each  of  us  must  be  aware  of  a  tendency  to 
believe  that  the  experience  and  training  which  were 
beneficial  for  us  must  be  the  best  possible  for  others. 
Also  we  magnify  the  importance  of  that  which 
we  have  known  by  deprecating  the  value  of  that 
which  we  have  not  known.  And  it  is  an  interesting 
fact  which  requires  no  comment  that  those  persons 
who  are  most  certain  that  the  newer  sciences  have 
little  or  no  cultural  value  are  always  those  who 
know  little  or  nothing  about  them. 

Thus  the  warfare  went  on  between  the  scientist 
and  the  classicist  during  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  occasionally  echoes  of  it 
are  heard  even  to  this  day.  But  the  demand  for 
instruction  in  science  comparable  to  that  in  other 
fields  of  learning  became  too  great  to  be  success- 
fully resisted  and  gradually  it  was  admitted  to  the 
college  curriculum,  but,  as  it  were,  by  the  back 
door.  The  scientific  goats  were  not  allowed  to 
mingle  with  the  academic  sheep,  but  in  the  larger 
universities  separate  scientific  schools  with  sepa- 
rate faculties  and  student  bodies  were  established, 
Buch  as  the  Lawrence  Scientific  School  at  Harvard, 
the  Sheffield  Scientific  School  at  Yale,  and  the 
Green  School  of  Science  at  Princeton ;  while  sepa- 
rate scientific  courses  having  different  require- 
ments for  entrance  and  for  degrees  than  in  the 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  68 

case  of  the  academic  courses  were  organized  in 
many  other  institutions. 

For  many  years  this  sharp  distinction  between 
academic  and  scientific  faculties  and  students  was 
maintained,  but  gradually  this  distinction  has 
broken  down  and  now  the  sheep  and  goats  are  gen- 
erally indistinguishable  except  that  at  Commence- 
ment the  former  are  branded  "  A.  B."  and  the  lat- 
ter "  B.  S." 


II 


Having  thus  briefly  sketched  the  historical  de- 
velopments by  which  the  physical  and  natural 
sciences  came  to  have  a  place  in  the  college  cur- 
riculum let  us  now  consider  the  more  fundamental 
question  as  to  whether  they  ought  to  be  there.  The 
physical  and  natural  sciences  now  form  a  well- 
recognized  and  firmly  established  part  of  the  cur- 
riculum of  every  higher  institution  of  learning. 
Indeed,  in  not  a  few  institutions  scientific  studies 
overshadow  all  others  and  we  have  passed  from  the 
condition  of  a  generation  ago,  when  science  was 
merely  tolerated  in  the  curriculum,  to  one  in  which 
the  question  is  frequently  asked  whether  we  are  not 
in  danger  of  losing  our  classics  and  humanities. 

What  are  the  net  results  of  all  these  changes? 
Are  we  losing  in  our  colleges  and  universities  high 
ideals  of  scholarship  and  culture?    Is  the  material 


64  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

and  sordid  character  of  the  age,  which  is  fre- 
quently proclaimed  and  decried,  the  result  of  in- 
creased attention  to  science  in  the  schools?  Does 
science  appeal  largely  to  the  material  interests  of 
men  while  leaving  untouched  their  intellectual  and 
spiritual  interests?  Is  a  scientific  education 
synonymous  with  a  technical  one,  and  is  it  the 
purpose  of  such  education  to  make  technicians 
rather  than  men? 

I  believe  that  all  these  questions  may  be  and 
should  be  answered  in  the  negative;  that  the  cul- 
tivation of  the  sciences  has  done  more  for  the 
intellectual  than  for  the  material  interests  of  men ; 
and  that  the  natural  sciences  have  rightfully  taken 
their  place  in  the  curriculum  alongside  of  the 
classics  and  the  humanities  as  subjects  of  liberal 
culture. 

No  education  is  liberal  which  does  not  introduce 
one  to  the  world's  best  thought  and  life.  A  purely 
classical  education  and  a  purely  scientific  one  are 
equally  illiberal.  A  liberal  education  is  broad, 
disciplinary,  and  useful;  it  educates  head,  heart, 
and  hand ;  it  must  include  literature,  science,  and 
humanities ;  it  must  fit  for  contact  with  the  world 
along  many  lines ;  it  must  help  one  to  find  himself 
and  to  choose  his  work;  it  must  prepare  for  the 
largest  usefulness  and  enjoyment. 

One  of  the  slight  compensations  for  the  world 
war  which  is  now  raging  is  that  we  are  likely  to 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  65 

hear  less  in  the  future  of  that  much  abused  word 
"  Culture."  For  half  a  century  it  has  been  a  word 
to  conjure  with,  especially  in  academic  circles,  but 
it  has  never  had  any  constant  meaning  except  that 
of  self-conscious  and  rather  intolerant  superiority. 
As  a  result,  every  cult  or  social  group  or  insti- 
tution or  nation  has  defined  the  word  so  as  to  in- 
clude itself  and  to  exclude  the  rest  of  the  world. 
Like  orthodoxy,  which  Bishop  Warburton  said  "  is 
my  doxy,  heterodoxy  is  another  man's  doxy,"  so 
culture  has  been  defined  as  my  cult,  while  all  other 
cults  are  philistinism.  In  particular  the  high 
priests  of  education  and  the  Levites  in  charge  of 
the  Ark  of  Culture  have  always  felt  called  upon 
to  smite  the  Philistines  hip  and  thigh. 

But  however  the  word  culture  may  have 
been  used  and  abused  we  all  agree  that  ideally  it 
stands  for  something  real  and  good.  It  is  no  ex- 
clusive possession  of  a  single  cult.  It  is  no  single 
definite  object,  but  a  general  and  rather  indefinite 
ideal.  There  are  many  kinds  of  culture,  but  each 
and  all  may  be  regarded  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
individual  or  from  that  of  society;  the  former  we 
call  education,  the  latter  civilization.  Viewed  from 
either  of  these  aspects  I  believe  that  it  can  be 
shown  that  science  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  and 
most  important  forces  in  modem  life. 

Much  has  been  said  and  written  of  the  debt  of 
civilization  to  the  natural  sciences,  but  it  is  per- 


66  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

haps  impossible  for  any  of  us  to  realize  the  extent 
of  that  obligation.  No  catalogue  of  the  material, 
the  intellectual,  the  moral,  and  the  social  changes 
wrought  in  human  society  by  science  and  the  scien- 
tific method  could  possibly  be  complete  and  none 
could  convey  any  adequate  conception  of  the  sum 
total  of  the  debt  which  mankind  owes  to  science. 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  chief  differ- 
ences between  ancient  and  modern  life  are  due  al- 
most entirely  to  this  one  factor.  Literature, 
philosophy,  and  art  the  ancients  had  which  will 
compare  favorably  with  that  of  any  age,  but  sci- 
ence they  did  not  have  except  in  its  merest  begin- 
nings. 

The  wonderful  material  changes  wrought  by  sci- 
ence, such  as  the  developments  of  steam,  electric- 
ity, and  great  engineering  enterprises  and  the  con- 
sequent increase  of  comforts  and  enlargement  of 
human  experience;  the  remarkable  growth  of  the 
applied  sciences  of  chemistry,  physics,  biology,  and 
geology ;  and  perhaps  most  of  all  the  revolutionary 
changes  in  medicine,  surgery,  and  public  health 
which  have  followed  a  scientific  study  of  the  causes 
and  remedies  of  various  diseases,  are  liable  to  blind 
us  to  other  great  achievements  of  science,  which 
if  less  material  are  none  the  less  real  and  valuable. 

1.  First  among  all  the  contributions  of  science 
to  civilization  stands  the  emancipation  of  man 
from  various  forms  of  bondage.     Science  has  to  a 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  67 

large  extent  freed  civilized  man  from  slavery  to 
environment;  it  has  well-nigh  annihilated  time  and 
space,  it  has  levied  tribute  upon  practically  the 
whole  earth  to  supply  his  wants,  it  has  taught  him 
how  to  utilize  the  great  resources  of  nature,  and  to 
a  large  extent  it  has  given  into  his  hands  the  con- 
trol of  his  destiny  on  this  planet. 

But  the  highest  service  of  science  to  culture  has 
been  in  the  emancipation  of  the  mind,  in  freeing 
men  from  the  bondage  of  superstition  and  igno- 
rance, in  helping  man  to  know  himself.  We  can 
never  fully  realize  the  terrors  of  a  world  supposed 
to  be  inhabited  by  demons  and  evil  spirits,  a  world 
in  which  all  natural  phenomena  were  but  the  ex- 
pressions of  the  love  or  hate  of  preternatural 
beings.  But  we  may  gather  from  history  and  from 
present-day  ignorance  and  superstition  some  faint 
idea  at  least  of  the  ever-present  dread,  even  amidst 
happiness  and  joy,  of  those  who  feared  Nature 
because  they  knew  her  not,  of  those  to  whom  the 
heavens  were  full  of  omens  and  the  earth  of  por- 
tents, of  those  who  peopled  every  shadow  with 
ghosts  and  evil  spirits  and  who  saw  in  all  sickness, 
pain,  adversity,  and  calamity  the  cruel  hand  of  a 
demon  or  the  evil  eye  of  a  witch. 

It  is  frequently  assumed  that  the  decline  of 
superstition  is  due  to  the  teachings  of  religion 
or  to  the  general  development  of  the  intellectual 
powers  of  man,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  to  a 


68  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

certain  extent  this  is  true.  The  general  advance 
of  the  intellect,  in  so  far  as  it  is  associated  with 
truer  views  of  nature,  is  unquestionably  inimical 
to  superstition ;  yet  the  persistence  of  such  a  super- 
stition as  that  concerning  witchcraft  through 
periods  of  great  religious  and  intellectual  awaken- 
ing, the  almost  universal  belief  in  it  throughout 
the  golden  age  of  Enghsh  Literature,  the  statutes 
of  all  European  countries  against  the  practice  of 
witchcraft,  sorcery,  and  magic,  some  of  which  re- 
mained until  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury— all  these  things  show  that  however  religion 
and  general  intelligence  may  have  curbed  its  cruel 
and  murderous  practices,  the  downfall  of  this 
superstition  could  be  brought  about  only  by  a 
more  thorough  knowledge  of  nature.  The  com- 
mon belief  that  insanity,  epilepsy,  and  imbecility 
were  the  results  of  demoniacal  possession  neces- 
sarily led,  even  in  enlightened  and  Christian  com- 
munities, to  cruel  methods  of  exorcising  the  de- 
mon, and  the  final  disappearance  of  this  super- 
stition (if  it  may  be  said  to  have  disappeared  even 
at  the  present  day)  is  entirely  due  to  a  scientific 
study  of  the  diseases  in  question. 

The  same  might  be  said  of  any  one  of  a  hun- 
dred forms  of  superstition,  which  like  a  legion  of 
demons  hedged  about  the  lives  of  our  ancestors. 
As  false  interpretations  of  natural  phenomena, 
only  truer  interpretation  could  replace  them,  and 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  69 

what  centuries  of  the  best  literature,  philosophy, 
and  religion  had  failed  to  do  science  has  accom- 
plished. Science  is,  as  Huxley  has  said,  organized 
and  trained  common  sense,  and  nowhere  is  this  bet- 
ter shown  than  in  its  rational,  common-sense  way 
of  interpreting  mysterious  phenomena.  No  doubt 
much  stiU  remains  to  be  accomplished;  the  unsci- 
entific world  is  stiU  full  of  superstition  as  to 
natural  phenomena,  but  it  is  a  superstition  of  a 
less  malignant  type  than  that  which  prevailed  be- 
fore the  general  introduction  of  the  scientific 
method. 

Furthermore  the  cultivation  of  the  natural  sci- 
ences has  done  more  than  all  other  agencies  to 
liberate  man  from  slavish  regard  for  authority. 
When  all  others  were  appealing  to  antiquity,  the 
Church,  the  Scriptures,  Science  appealed  to  facts. 
She  has  braved  the  anathemas  of  popes  and  church 
councils,  of  philosophers  and  scholars  in  her  search 
for  truth;  she  has  freed  man  from  ecclesiastical, 
patristic,  even  academic  bondage;  she  has  unfet- 
tered the  mind,  enthroned  the  reason,  taught  the 
duty  and  responsibility  of  independent  thought 
and  her  message  to  mankind  has  ever  been  the  mes- 
sage of  enlightenment  and  liberty,  "  Ye  shall  know 
the  truth  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free." 

2.  But  science  has  not  only  broken  the  chains 
of  superstition  and  proclaimed  intellectual  eman- 
cipation, she  has  enormously  enlarged  the  field  of 


TO  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

thought.  She  has  given  men  nobler  and  grander 
conceptions  of  nature  than  were  ever  dreamed  of 
before.  Contrast  the  old  geocentric  theory  which 
made  the  earth  the  center  of  all  created  things 
with  the  revelations  of  modern  astronomy  as  to 
the  enormous  sizes,  distances,  and  velocities  of  the 
heavenly  bodies ;  contrast  the  old  view  that  the 
earth  was  made  about  six  thousand  years  ago — 
5,675  last  September,  to  be  exact,  and  in  six  literal 
days — with  the  revelations  of  geology  that  the 
earth  is  immeasurably  old  and  that  not  days  but 
millions  of  years  have  been  consumed  in  its  mak- 
ing; contrast  the  doctrine  of  creation,  which 
taught  that  the  world  and  all  that  therein  is  re- 
cently and  miraculously  were  launched  into  exist- 
ence, with  the  revelations  of  science  that  animals 
and  plants  and  the  world  itself  are  the  result  of 
an  immensely  long  process  of  evolution.  As  Dar- 
win so  beautifully  says,  "  There  is  grandeur  in 
this  view  of  life  with  its  several  powers  having 
been  breathed  by  the  Creator  into  a  few  forms  or 
into  one,  and  that  whilst  this  planet  has  gone 
cycling  on  according  to  the  first  law  of  gravity, 
from  so  simple  a  beginning  endless  forms  most 
beautiful  and  most  wonderful  have  been  and  are 
being  evolved."  There  is  grandeur  in  the  revela- 
tions of  science  concerning  the  whole  of  nature — 
grandeur  not  only  in  the  conceptions  of  immen- 
sity which  it  discloses,  but  also  of  the  stability  of 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  71 

nature.  To  the  man  of  science,  nature  does  not 
represent  the  mere  caprice  of  god  or  devil,  to  be 
lightly  altered  for  a  child's  whim.  Nature  is,  as 
Bishop  Butler  said,  that  which  is  stated,  fixed, 
settled;  eternal  process  moving  on,  the  same  yes- 
terday, to-day,  and  forever.  Men  may  come  and 
men  may  go,  doctrines  may  rise  and  disappear, 
states  may  flourish  and  decay,  but  in  nature,  as 
in  God  himself,  there  is  neither  variableness  nor 
shadow  of  turning.  The  all  too  prevalent  notion 
that  nature  may  be  wheedled,  cheated,  juggled 
with,  shows  that  men  have  not  yet  begun  to  realize 
the  stability  of  nature  and  indicates  the  necessity 
of  at  least  some  elementary  scientific  training  for 
all  men.  "  To  the  solid  ground  of  Nature  trusts 
the  mind  that  builds  for  aye." 

3.  Science  has  changed  our  whole  point  of  view 
as  to  nature  and  man,  and  science  cannot  there- 
fore be  eliminated  from  any  system  of  education 
which  strives  to  impart  culture.  It  is  not  prin- 
cipally nor  primarily  in  its  results,  however  great 
they  may  be,  that  the  chief  service  of  science  is  found, 
but  rather  in  its  method.  In  a  word  the  method  of 
science  is  the  appeal  to  phenomena,  the  appeal  to 
nature.  To  the  scientist  the  test  of  truth  is  not 
logic,  nor  inner  conviction,  nor  conceivability  and 
inconceivability,  but  phenomena  or  what  are  com- 
monly called  facts.  The  steps  of  this  appeal  to 
phenomena   are  first  observation   or  experiment; 


72  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

then  induction,  hypothesis,  or  generalization,  and 
finally  verification  by  further  observations,  experi- 
ments, and  comparisons.  The  methods  of  science 
have  now  invaded  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  all 
domains  of  thought, — philosophy,  literature,  art, 
education,  and  religion, — and  the  unique  character 
of  the  method  of  science  may  not  be  fully  appre- 
ciated except  upon  comparison  with  prescientific 
or  non-scientific  methods. 

Of  course  one  need  not  expect  to  find  any  proper 
appreciation  of  the  scientific  method  among  the 
ignorant,  but  it  is  amazing  how  such  appreciation 
is  lacking  among  many  otherwise  intelligent  and 
cultivated  people.  We  daily  see  cases  where  the 
test  of  truth  is  the  appeal  to  superstition,  to  senti- 
ment, to  prejudice,  to  inner  conviction,  in  short 
to  anything  rather  than  to  facts.  The  world  is 
full  of  people  who  know  nothing  of  the  value  of 
facts  or  of  evidence,  whether  it  be  with  regard  to 
such  general  themes  as  religion,  education,  gov- 
ernment, society,  personality,  or  more  special 
ones  such  as  diseases  and  methods  of  treating 
them,  vaccination,  animal  experimentation,  food 
fads,  and  the  like. 

Consider  for  a  moment  the  art  of  healing,  as 
contrasted  with  the  science  of  medicine;  the  vari- 
ous "  schools  of  medicine  "  and  much  more  those 
who  never  went  to  school  appeal  not  to  carefully 
determined,  accurately  controllable  phenomena,  but 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  73 

largely  to  sentiment,  prejudice,  and  superstition. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  "  fake  "  science  which 
flourishes  mightily  in  the  daily  papers,  and  espe- 
cially is  it  shown  in  the  hypotheses,  discoveries, 
and  dogmas  of  those  who  determine  the  laws  of 
nature  from  introspection  and  construct  the  uni- 
verse from  their  inner  consciousness. 

Every  little  while  there  arises  a  new  and  bril- 
liant Lucifer  who  draws  after  him  a  third  part  of 
the  hosts  of  heaven.  Though  he  appears  under 
many  guises,  such  as  Divine  Healer,  Christian  Sci- 
entist (Heaven  save  the  mark!).  Spiritualist,  The- 
osophist,  Telepathist,  the  main  tenet  of  his  belief  is 
always  the  same, — a  revolt  against  the  scientific 
method  of  appealing  to  phenomena. 

One  of  the  hardest  lessons  of  life  is  to  learn  to 
see  things  as  they  are.  We  tend  by  nature  to  put 
ourselves  into  everything  we  interpret.  We  see 
things  not  as  they  are  but  embroidered  round  and 
covered  over  by  our  fear  or  love  or  hate.  Our 
emotions  blind  our  judgments  and  not  infre- 
quently reduce  us  to  the  level  of  irrational  beings. 
There  are  thousands  of  intelligent  men  and  women, 
among  them  many  graduates  of  colleges  and  uni- 
versities, whose  opinions  regarding  the  most  im- 
portant questions  of  their  lives  are  shaped  by 
sentiment  and  prejudice  and  convention  rather 
than  by  a  study  of  facts.  And  it  is  this  which 
makes  possible  blind  loyalty  whether  to  college  or 


74  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

party  or  church,  and  blind  prejudice  and  hatred 
between  classes  and  races  and  nations ;  it  is  this 
which  arouses  war  and  destroys  the  monuments 
of  civilization.  It  is  this  refusal  to  see  things  as 
they  are  that  destroys  character  and  peace  and 
progress. 

What  is  the  remedy  for  such  a  state  of  affairs? 
What  can  be  done  by  our  colleges  and  schools  to 
improve  this  really  dreadful  condition.'^  How 
can  individuals  be  taught  the  value  of  facts.'' 
There  is  probably  no  better  way  than  by  incul- 
cating the  methods  of  science,  by  the  first-hand 
appeal  to  phenomena.  The  appeal  to  facts  is  the 
very  foundation  of  science,  and  it  is  a  method  in 
which  every  person  should  receive  thorough  and 
systematic  training.  Even  this  will  fail  in  many 
cases  where  inherited  tendencies  are  too  strong 
to  be  overcome  by  training,  but  at  least  it  will 
help  to  promote  a  spirit  of  open-mindedness,  sin- 
cerity, and  sanity. 

To  me  it  seems  that  there  is  no  part  of  an 
education  so  important  as  this,  none  the  lack  of 
which  will  so  seriously  mar  the  whole  life.  Of 
course  it  is  not  claimed  that  all  scientists  best 
illustrate  the  scientific  method  nor  that  it  may  not 
be  practiced  by  those  who  have  not  studied  sci- 
ence, but  that  this  method  is  best  inculcated  in 
the  study  of  the  natural  sciences.  Science  not 
only  appeals  to  facts,  but  it  cultivates  a  love  of 


THE  PLACE  OF  SCIENCES  75 

truth,  not  merely  of  the  sentimental  sort,  but  such 
as  leads  men  to  long-continued  and  laborious  re- 
search; it  trains  the  critical  judgment  as  to  evi- 
dence ;  it  gives  man  truer  views  of  himself  and  of 
the  world  in  which  he  lives,  and  it  therefore  fur- 
nishes, as  I  believe,  the  best  possible  foundation 
not  only  for  scholarship  in  any  field,  but  for  citi- 
zenship and  general  culture. 

But  culture  is  not  some  definite  goal  to  be 
reached  by  a  single  kind  of  discipline.  There  is 
no  single  path  to  culture  and  the  great  danger 
which  confronts  the  student  of  the  natural  sciences 
is  that  his  absorption  in  his  work  may  lead  to  a 
narrowness  which  blinds  him  to  the  larger  sig- 
nificance of  the  facts  with  which  he  deals  and  unfits 
him  for  association  with  his  fellow-men.  A  techni- 
cal education  which  deals  only  with  training  for 
special  work  without  reference  to  foundation  prin- 
ciples may  be  useful  and  necessary  but  it  cannot 
be  said  to  contribute  largely  to  culture.  What 
teacher  has  not  been  surprised  and  pained  by  the 
fear  which  some  students  exhibit  that  they  may 
waste  an  hour  on  some  subject  the  direct  financial 
value  of  which  they  do  not  see, — students  who 
fail  to  grasp  general  principles,  to  take  a  broad 
and  generous  view  of  life,  to  appreciate  good  work 
wherever  done?  The  scientist  no  less  than  the 
classicist  or  the  humanist  should  know  the  world's 
best  thought  and  life.     Life  is  not  only  Tcrwwing 


76  EDWIN  G.  CONKLIN 

but  feeling  and  doing  also,  and  other  things  than 
science  are  necessary  to  culture.  The  day  is  for- 
ever past  when  any  one  mind  can  master  all  sci- 
ences, much  less  all  knowledge;  there  can  never  be 
another  Aristotle  or  Humboldt ;  nevertheless  in  the 
demand  for  broad  and  liberal  training  the  greatest 
needs  of  scientific  work  and  the  highest  ideals  of 
culture  are  at  one,  and  this  Institution  can  serve 
no  more  useful  purpose  than  to  stand  in  the  future, 
as  it  has  done  in  the  past,  for  the  highest,  broad- 
est, and  most  generous  views  of  learning  and  of 
life. 


THE  COLLEGE  AS  A  PREPARA- 
TION FOR  PROFESSIONAL 
STUDY 

PRESIDENT  RUSH  RHEES 

We  are  constantly  reminded  of  the  fact  that 
modern  higher  education  is  the  outgrowth  of  a 
medieval  demand  for  more  thorough  training  for 
professional  careers — in  theology,  in  law,  in  medi- 
cine, and  in  teaching.  And  it  is  true  that  the 
foremost  of  the  medieval  universities  gained  dis- 
tinction as  schools  for  training  for  one  or  others 
of  these  professions — Bologna  for  law  both  civil 
and  canon,  Salerno  for  medicine,  Paris  and  in 
large  measure  the  ancient  EngHsh  universities  for 
theology — while  all  of  these  maintained  faculties 
of  arts,  whose  masters  became  the  teaching  guild 
for  all  of  Christian  Europe. 

It  cannot  be  regarded  as  accident,  however,  but 
as  a  conclusion  from  experience,  that  in  most  of 
those  universities  the  faculty  of  arts  early  came 
to  be  more  than  a  colleague  or  rival  of  the  other 
faculties.  It  soon  developed  into  an  ally  of  the 
others,  and,  particularly  in  the  English  univer- 
sities,   the    primate    among    them.     The    courses 

77 


78  RUSH  RHEES 

of  study  for  theology  and  law  early  recognized 
the  value  of  a  prior  training  of  their  students  under 
the  faculty  of  arts ;  and  special  concessions  were 
made  in  the  time  required  for  degrees  in  the  case 
of  students  who  enrolled  under  these  faculties 
after  being  graduated  in  arts. 

Nor  can  it  be  truly  deemed  accidental  that, 
when  the  colonists  in  New  England  and  Virginia 
made  the  first  beginnings  of  higher  education  in 
America,  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  training 
youth  for  the  ministry,  for  law,  for  medicine, 
and  for  public  service,  they  planted  in  the  wilder- 
ness not  schools  of  theology  or  medicine  or  law, 
but  modest  copies  of  the  English  colleges  in 
which  their  founders  had  gained  their  own  train- 
ing in  general  liberal  culture. 

In  accordance  with  the  precedents  with  which 
the  founders  of  Harvard  and  Yale  were  familiar 
in  their  English  college  life,  and  for  the  further- 
ance of  the  primary  purpose  which  actuated  the 
founding  of  those  first  New  England  colleges, 
chairs  of  divinity  were  indeed  established  in  Har- 
vard in  1638  and  in  Yale  in  1741.  In  1755  the 
charter  of  Kings  College  (now  Columbia)  pro- 
vided for  a  professorship  of  divinity,  but  no  ap- 
pointment was  ever  made.  During  all  the  colonial 
period,  however,  practical  preparation  for  the  min- 
istry was  for  the  most  part  obtained  by  means  of 
the  instruction  and  example  furnished  to  aspirants 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      79 

for  the  ministry  by  leaders  in  that  profession, 
who  took  the  young  theologues  into  their  homes 
and  churches  as  virtual  apprentices.  A  similar 
apprenticeship  system  was  relied  upon  for  the 
training  of  physicians  and  lawyers.  In  the  ex- 
igencies of  their  pioneer  life  the  founders  of  our 
American  colleges  selected  instinctively  the  school 
of  liberal  culture  as  the  indispensable  factor 
in  higher  education,  and  left  to  a  later  time 
the  development  of  schools  for  professional 
training. 

Not  until  the  closing  years  of  the  colonial 
period  did  that  development  make  its  appearance. 

As  early  as  1750  lectures  on  anatomy  were 
given  in  Philadelphia  by  Dr.  Thomas  Cadwallader, 
and  in  1765  Dr.  John  Morgan  and  Dr.  William 
Shippen,  Jr.,  founded  a  school  of  medicine  in  that 
city,  which  was  attached  to  the  College  of  Phila- 
delphia, now  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  In 
1763  the  governors  of  Kings  College  in  New  York 
voted  to  provide  instruction  in  medicine  as  soon  as 
funds  could  be  procured,  and  in  1767  a  Medical 
School  was  established  with  six  professors,  the  first 
medical  degrees  being  awarded  to  two  graduates 
in  1769.  The  Harvard  Medical  School  was 
founded  in  1782.  Since  that  time  the  growth  of 
schools  of  medicine  in  our  country  has  been  abun- 
dant if  not  appalling. 

The  first  school  organized  to  give  instruction  in 


80  RUSH  RHEES 

law  was  founded  by  Topping  Reeve  in  Litchfield, 
Connecticut,  in  1784,  and  it  flourished  for  many 
years,  graduating  over  a  thousand  students.  In 
1792  a  chair  of  law  in  Columbia  College  was 
created,  and  in  1793  James  Kent  was  chosen  to  fill 
it.  He  held  the  post  until  1798,  when  through  fail- 
ure of  the  legislative  grant  which  had  provided 
the  salary  the  chair  was  discontinued. 

In  1823,  however,  Kent  again  became  professor 
of  law  in  Columbia  CoUege,  and  held  the  post 
until  his  death  in  1847.  The  Harvard  Law  School 
dates  from  1820,  though  its  vigorous  life  did  not 
show  itself  until  1830. 

The  year  1784  saw  the  establishment  of  the  first 
Theological  Seminary  in  America — that  of  the 
Dutch  Reformed  Church,  in  New  Brunswick,  New 
Jersey.  Since  that  time  many  schools  for  minis- 
terial education  have  been  founded,  and  more  of 
them  have  been  independent  of  aflUiation  with  col- 
leges or  universities  than  have  had  such  academic 
connections. 

The  modern  developments  of  applied  science 
have  brought  into  being  many  very  strong  schools 
for  training  in  various  branches  of  engineer- 
ing, a  development  prophetically  foreseen  in  the 
later  years  of  the  eighteenth  century,  but  essen- 
tially a  nineteenth-century  growth.  Even  more  re- 
cent is  the  development,  now  progressing  rapidly, 
of  special  colleges  for  the  training  of  teachers, 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      81 

to  which  many  students  resort  who  have  first  gained 
a  bachelor's  degree  in  arts  or  science. 

I  have  offered  this  cursory  sketch  simply  to  re- 
mind you  of  the  relative  lateness,  as  weU  as  of  the 
recent  luxuriousness,  of  the  growth  of  institutions 
for  distinctly  professional  education. 

I  now  desire  to  call  attention  to  an  interesting 
feature  of  that  development.  Many  of  the  schools 
for  theology,  medicine,  and  law  which  appeared 
during  the  nineteenth  century  not  only  had  no 
connection  with  any  faculty  of  arts  or  liberal  cul- 
ture, but  made  hesitating  if  any  demand  for  col- 
lege training  as  prerequisite  for  admission  to  the 
professional  courses. 

This  attitude  of  independence  or  indifference 
found  some  historical  justification  in  the  practical 
parity  of  the  faculties  of  theology,  medicine,  and 
law  with  the  faculty  of  arts  in  the  typical  medie- 
val universities,  and  it  characterized  until  quite 
recent  times  the  attitude  and  practice  of  most  of 
the  professional  faculties  which  were  developed  by 
our  older  colleges  in  the  course  of  the  development 
of  a  genuine  university  organization.  Not  only 
so,  but  a  singular  inconsistency  sometimes  ap- 
peared, namely  a  readiness  on  the  part  of  pro- 
fessional faculties  in  our  emerging  universities  to 
receive  students  in  their  classes  with  less  rigid 
scrutiny  of  their  preliminary  education  than  the 
college — or  arts — faculty  were  exercising. 


m  RUSH  RHEES 

Recent  years,  however,  have  seen  two  note- 
worthy developments  in  professional  education  in 
America:  A  very  great  broadening  of  the  concep- 
tion of  professional  education,  which  has  given 
to  the  work  of  these  schools  a  more  generally 
scientific,  as  distinguished  from  a  narrow  voca- 
tional or  technical,  character;  and  a  decided  stiff- 
ening of  requirements  for  preliminary  education 
both  in  extent  and  in  quality.  The  former  of 
these  tendencies  is  a  natural  consequence  of  a 
higher  conception  of  the  importance  of  the  sci- 
entific basis  for  professional  competency,  and  a 
more  alert  academic  conscience.  It  has  brought 
about  a  marked  increase  in  the  personnel  of  the 
force  of  instruction  essential  to  the  maintenance 
of  such  professional  schools,  a  growing  demand 
that  incumbents  of  professorships  in  such  schools 
be  acknowledged  leaders  in  the  scientific  aspects 
of  their  specialties,  and  that  they  be  men  who  are 
willing  to  make  teaching  their  vocation,  not  simply 
their  avocation.  This  recent  development  has  also 
involved  a  great  increase  in  the  extent  and  costli- 
ness of  the  equipment  for  professional  education. 
As  a  consequence  there  appears  a  strong  tend- 
ency to  concentrate  effort  for  the  betterment 
of  teaching  in  theology,  law,  and  medicine 
upon  schools  which  are  organized  as  depart- 
ments of  strong  universities,  or  may  become  such 
by  affiliation. 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      83 

The  tendency  to  increasing  vigor  in  the  defini- 
tion and  administration  of  entrance  requirements 
shows  two  aspects  which  are  of  great  interest  to 
the  American  college.  There  is  on  the  one  hand  a 
slowly  growing  demand  for  a  bachelor's  degree,  or 
its  clear  equivalent,  as  a  condition  of  admission  to 
some  of  the  leading  professional  schools.  And 
where  this  rigid  requirement  is  not  enforced,  there 
appears  in  its  place  a  requirement  of  the  successful 
completion  of  one,  two,  or  three  years  of  the  cus- 
tomary college  course. 

Herein  we  see  a  revival  of  the  preference  granted 
to  Masters  of  Arts  by  the  faculties  of  theology 
and  law  in  several  of  the  medieval  universities, 
or  a  desire  to  put  admission  to  American  univer- 
sity schools  of  law  and  medicine  on  a  basis  equiva- 
lent to  that  furnished  by  the  completion  of  the 
course  of  study  in  a  German  gymnasium  or  a 
French  lycee. 

On  the  other  hand  there  appears  to  be  growing, 
especially  in  the  demands  of  faculties  of  medi- 
cine, a  tendency  to  push  back  into  the  college 
course  something  of  the  narrowness  of  profes- 
sional outlook  and  interest  which  belongs  of  neces- 
sity to  the  professional  school. 

Now,  what  meaning  have  these  developments  for 
the  American  college?  On  the  one  hand  the 
growth  of  professional  schools  in  equipment  of 
men  and  material  facilities,  and  in  scientific  thor- 


84  RUSH  RHEES 

oughness,  which  is  placing  them  in  the  plane  of 
worthy  constituent  membership  in  a  group  of  uni- 
versity faculties,  seems  to  not  a  few  to  point  to  a 
coming  readjustment  of  American  education,  in 
which  the  old-time  college,  which  served  well  the 
needs  of  our  pioneer  life,  shall  give  way  for  a 
more  modem  adjustment  of  secondary  to  higher 
education.  On  the  other  hand  the  tendency  on 
the  part  of  several  of  our  most  richly  endowed 
and  equipped  professional  faculties  to  declare 
that  their  superior  service  is  to  be  reserved 
for  a  select  class  of  students,  who  qualify  for 
the  privilege  by  obtaining  first  a  bachelor's 
degree,  gives  a  notable  testimony  to  the  value 
which  leaders  in  professional  education  place 
upon  the  effects  of  a  thorough  course  in  liberal 
culture. 

Let  me  call  attention  at  this  point  to  the  essen- 
tial features  of  college  education  as  we  in  America 
have  developed  it.  The  American  college  either  by 
the  invitation  of  attractive  opportunity  for  elec- 
tion, or  more  commonly  by  a  more  or  less  definite 
prescription  of  studies,  opens  for  its  students  doors 
of  outlook  upon  many  different  sides  of  life  and 
phases  of  truth.  The  college  degree  presupposes 
that  its  holder  has  gained  some  acquaintance  with 
at  least  several  of  the  great  departments  of  col- 
lege instruction :  namely,  foreign  languages ;  the 
mathematical,  natural,  and  physical  sciences — ^both 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      85 

as  to  facts  and  as  to  scientific  method ;  the  history 
of  the  political  development  which  has  given  us  our 
institutions ;  economic  and  social  science ;  philos- 
ophy— the  endeavor  of  the  human  mind  to  appre- 
hend somewhat  of  the  meaning  of  existence;  and 
literature — the  record  of  the  high  creative  attain- 
ments of  human  thought  and  insight.  No  student 
is  likely  to  have  entered  upon  all  these  branches 
of  study,  every  graduate  has  given  his  attention 
to  several  of  them. 

Now  each  one  of  these  branches  of  college  study 
appeals  to  a  different  sort  of  intellectual  interest, 
and  awakens  a  different  kind  of  intellectual  alert- 
ness ;  and  as  studied  in  college  each  introduces  the 
student  to  the  value  and  delight  of  learning,  quite 
apart  from  any  consideration  of  the  subsequent 
utility  of  the  subject-matter  of  the  studies  pur- 
sued. '    '1 

Obviously  it  is  important  that  the  years  spent 
on  the  study  of  Greek  or  Latin  or  German  or 
French  should  endow  the  student  with  the  ability 
to  use  these  foreign  tongues  for  reading  or  con- 
versation. But  even  more  significant  than  that 
ability  is  the  experience  which  the  study  of  for- 
eign languages  gives  of  the  understanding  of  ideas 
unfamiliar  to  the  student's  thought,  expressed  in 
words  and  constructions  strange  to  his  mind,  which 
picture  conditions  of  life  and  ideals  of  conduct 
and    endeavor    quite    foreign    to   his    experience. 


86  RUSH  RHEES 

This  study  stretches  the  boundaries  of  his  under- 
standing and  sympathy,  and  begets  in  him,  if  it 
succeeds  with  him  at  all,  a  power  of  intellectual  ad- 
justment to  unanticipated  conditions  and  ideas, 
and  a  power  of  appreciation  for  truth  appearing 
in  strange  garb,  that  not  only  enrich  the  man's  life, 
but  immensely  enlarge  his  ability  to  be  of  use  in 
dealing  with  other  men.  For,  after  all,  the  great 
task  of  human  fellowship  in  work  and  in  social  re- 
lations is  the  task  of  translation.  The  greatest 
need  of  my  life  of  human  intercourse  is  ability  to 
understand  what  another  man  means  who  does  not 
think  in  my  way  or  speak  with  my  shibboleths, 
and  ability  to  express  my  thought  in  terms 
that  will  convey  and  not  obscure  it  to  another 
mind. 

Similarly  the  study  of  science  and  of  history 
enlarges  the  borders  of  a  man's  life,  and  deepens 
the  wells  of  his  understanding,  quite  in  addition 
to  the  mastery  he  may  gain  of  the  facts  and 
hypotheses  and  methods  of  any  particular  science, 
or  the  familiarity  his  study  may  give  him  with  the 
story  of  any  given  people  or  period  of  history. 
And  such  broadening  increases  rapidly  with  each 
additional  science  or  historical  epoch  with  which 
the  student  gains  acquaintance. 

Quite  different  and  more  deepening  is  the  en- 
largement which  comes  to  the  mind  with  the  pur- 
suit of  philosophical  inquiry  and  the  study  of  the 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      87 

history  of  human  thought.  While  the  man  who 
enters  the  treasure  house  of  literature,  and  makes 
friends  with  the  great  minds  of  the  ages,  has  en- 
riched his  life  with  enduring  wealth  of  intellectual 
comradeship,  and  has  also  risen  to  a  higher  out- 
look upon  life  and  all  its  concerns,  whence  he 
can  see  things  in  more  just  proportions,  and 
judge  questions  with  more  equitable  judgment, 
than  is  possible  for  the  man  of  rigid  professional 
training. 

It  is  not  only  impossible,  but  it  is  undesirable 
that  any  man  should  be  asked  to  gain  for  himself 
each  one  of  these  varied  enlargements  of  life;  for 
the  effort  would  frustrate  itself  by  substituting 
superficial  intellectual  indulgence  for  serious  in- 
tellectual work.  But  the  significance  of  college 
training  lies  in  the  fact  that  these  avenues  of 
interest  and  human  enlargement  are  opened  to  the 
college  student,  that  each  man  of  necessity  enters 
upon  two  or  more  of  them,  and  that  in  each  one 
of  them  he  follows  a  path  that  leads  him  to  a 
larger  knowledge  of  truth,  without  conscious  con- 
cern for  the  practical  uses  of  that  truth. 

I  say  without  conscious  concern  for  the  practical 
uses  of  that  truth.  For  with  the  amazing  de- 
velopment of  the  applications  of  science  and  all 
learning  to  the  practical  problems  of  our  modem 
life  there  are  few  branches  of  intellectual  inquiry 
that  do  not  contribute  greatly  to  some  practical 


88  RUSH  RHEES 

undertakings  which  men  follow  as  vocations.  The 
study  of  chemistry  and  biology  in  college  may 
be,  and  should  be,  directly  serviceable  to  gradu- 
ates who  enter  medical  schools.  The  college 
studies  of  history  and  philosophy  may  be,  and 
should  be,  directly  serviceable  to  men  who  go  for- 
ward to  prepare  for  the  ministry  or  the  law.  But 
there  is  importance  in  the  detachment  from  con- 
cern with  practical  uses  which  characterizes  the 
college  man's  pursuit  of  learning.  That  detach- 
ment constitutes  one  of  the  most  valuable  items 
in  his  education,  one  of  the  most  effective  influ- 
ences for  intellectual  breadth  and  intellectual  sym- 
pathy. For  it  carries  his  thought  out  to  interests 
and  realities  that  are  beyond  and  above  his  own 
life,  and  furnishes  a  wide  horizon  in  which  to  see 
the  relations  and  proportions  of  his  more  personal 
undertakings  and  concerns. 

This  brings  me  to  the  essence  of  the  subject 
which  has  been  assigned  to  me,  and  gives  oppor- 
tunity for  avowal  of  my  faith  in  the  present  and 
future  value  of  the  American  college. 

I  believe  that  the  American  college  contributes 
to  preparation  for  professional  study  an  influence 
for  intellectual  maturity  which  no  other  agency 
has  to  off^er.  By  intellectual  maturity  I  do  not 
mean  simply  developed  intellectual  power,  for  pro- 
fessional studies  as  at  present  conducted  have  no 
superior  in  that  respect.     I  mean  by  intellectual 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      89 

maturity  a  well-balanced  judgment,  a  sense  of  pro- 
portion in  the  estimate  of  truth,  and  ability  to 
see  facts  in  larger  and  more  remote  as  well  as  in 
nearer  and  obvious  relations.  It  is  a  maturity 
like  that  which  a  man  gains  from  travel  in  foreign 
lands,  like  that  which  the  varied  experiences  of 
city  life  bring  to  the  man  country  bred.  It  depends 
on  ability  to  see  particular  truths  from  the  vantage 
point  of  a  wide  outlook,  and  to  estimate  them  with 
the  broad  sympathy  of  understanding  which  is  be- 
gotten by  interest  in   other  phases  of  truth. 

Such  breadth  of  outlook  and  sympathy  of  under- 
standing come  to  the  student  of  theology  or  law 
who  knows  something  of  the  facts  and  methods  of 
natural  or  physical  science.  They  are  given  to  a 
student  of  medicine  or  engineering  by  some  knowl- 
edge of  literature  and  some  understanding  of 
philosophy  and  philosophic  method. 

College  education  cannot  guarantee  that  intel- 
lectual maturity  will  be  found  in  all  wearers  of 
college  degrees — for  some  students  never  get  their 
blinders  off,  so  as  to  see  truths  in  wide  relations. 
But  college  education  offers  the  most  promising 
means  for  such  intellectual  emancipation.  There- 
fore I  hold  it  to  be  a  peculiarly  important  and  valu- 
able preparation  for  professional  study. 

This  service  cannot  be  so  well  rendered  by  an  ex- 
tension of  the  secondary  school,  after  the  pattern 
of  the  German  or  French  practice.    The  medieval 


90  RUSH  RHEES 

course  in  arts  was  not  a  preparatory  school, 
though  its  value  as  a  preparation  for  work 
under  other  faculties  was  early  recognized.  The 
independence  of  interest,  the  detachment  of  en- 
deavor, which  belong  to  the  best  college  work,  con- 
tribute in  essential  ways  to  the  maturing  influences 
which  give  college  study  its  value  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  later  professional  courses.  If  I  mistake 
not,  herein  lies  part  of  the  secret  of  the  peculiar 
sanity,  the  balance  of  judgment,  and  the  sense  of 
proportion  which  characterize  English  scholarship, 
even  when  in  laborious  mastery  of  details  and  in 
wealth  of  erudition  it  falls  short  of  German  and 
French  attainments.  I  am  convinced  that  for  our 
future  good  the  emphasis  we  have  placed  on  studies 
for  liberal  culture  in  the  atmosphere  of  an  insti- 
tution of  higher  learning,  borrowing  our  practices 
from  England,  should  be  strengthened,  and  not 
abandoned. 

Another  contribution  which  college  education 
makes  to  preparation  for  professional  study  is 
corollary  to  this  maturity  of  mind  to  which  I  have 
just  alluded.  Let  me  call  it  a  developed  intellectual 
instinct  against  rash  generalizations  and  against 
over-confident  logical  conclusions.  I  shall  doubt- 
less lay  myself  open  to  charge  of  transgressing 
my  own  law,  if  I  confess  that  I  know  of  no  more 
misleading  influence  in  our  intellectual  life  than 
logic.     That  generalization  is  rash.     Its  justifica- 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      91 

tion  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  challenges  consideration, 
critical,  modest,  and  teachable,  of  the  premises  of 
which  impeccable  logical  procedure  makes  use.  I 
know  nothing  more  pathetic  than  the  dogmatic  de- 
liverances of  metaphysical  theologians  concerning 
what  can  be  true  in  the  world  of  nature,  except- 
ing the  dogmatic  assertions  of  men  of  science  who 
wander  into  philosophy's  domain  and  seem  wholly 
unaware  that  in  that  strange  field  their  impressions 
and  speculations  have  lost  all  the  authority  that  of 
right  inhered  in  their  scientific  observations  and 
inductions  therefrom.  We  have  heard  and  seen 
much  these  recent  months  of  the  so-called  biological 
defense  of  war.  The  tragedy  of  that  argument  is 
its  false  analogy,  its  blindness  to  what  fitness  and 
progress  have  come  to  mean  in  the  unfolding  of 
human  history.  The  sensitive  intellectual  con- 
science, quick  to  discern  such  fallacies,  and  repudi- 
ate premises  which  issue  in  false  conclusions,  is 
bred  by  such  varied  studies  and  such  detached 
interests  as  the  college  of  liberal  culture  offers  to 
its  students. 

Another  value  of  college  training  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  professional  study  I  find  in  that  facility 
of  translation  to  which  I  have  already  referred  as 
one  of  the  most  essential  qualities  of  the  broadly 
educated  man.  It  is  needless  that  I  enlarge  fur- 
ther upon  it;  enough  to  call  to  mind  the  growing 
importance,  with  the  increase  of  men  practicing 


92  RUSH  RHEES 

our  varied  professions,  of  ability  on  the  part  of 
leaders  in  professional  life  to  convince  and  lead 
what  I  may  call  "  lay  "  opinion.  Experience  has 
demonstrated  that  that  power  of  translation,  of 
expressing  new  truth  in  familiar  terms,  is  one  of 
the  natural  products  of  college  education. 

One  other  contribution  is  indirect  rather  than 
obvious,  and  it  is  even  more  broadly  human  and 
less  professionally  significant  in  its  value  than 
either  the  maturity  of  mind  or  the  sensitive  intellec- 
tual conscience,  or  the  power  of  translation  to 
which  I  had  just  called  attention.  I  mean  the 
resources  for  richer  intellectual  living  which  a  man 
acquires  when  he  has  traveled  far  enough  and 
widely  enough  in  the  world  of  the  mind  to  be  at 
home  in  different  places  and  with  different  inter- 
ests, and  when  he  has  entered  somewhat  into  the 
fellowship  of  great  thoughts  and  great  lives  of 
other  times  and  other  climes. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  reaffirm  my  belief  that  how- 
ever much  of  accident  due  to  pioneer  conditions 
may  have  entered  into  the  origins  of  our  American 
colleges,  the  riper  development  of  our  intellectual 
life  is  to  come  to  our  country  by  nourishing,  by 
cultivating,  by  pruning  if  need  be,  and  by  guiding 
the  work  of  the  American  college,  so  that  the 
unique  service  which  can  be  rendered  to  national 
wisdom  and  national  power  by  the  matured  mind 
and  judgment  of  men  who  have  pursued  truth  with 


PREPARATION  FOR  PROFESSIONS      93 

some  detachment  from  every  consideration  but  the 
love  of  it  may  be  the  privilege  of  the  coming  gen- 
erations, as  it  has  been  of  that  which  is  now  join- 
ing here  in  celebration  of  a  century  of  fidelity  to 
its  ideals  by  an  American  college. 


THE  COLLEGE  AS  A  PREPARA- 
TION FOR  PRACTICAL  AFFAIRS 

PRESIDENT   CHARLES  F.    THWING 

And  what  are  practical  affairs?  What  are  the 
forces,  the  movements,  the  concerns  which  we  call 
practical?  The  practical  represents  those  powers 
often  called  utilities,  which  are  embodied  in  ma- 
terial forms,  or  which  represent  those  forms.  The 
practical  is  a  force  which  makes  its  appeal  to  the 
eye,  to  the  ear,  to  the  touch.  The  non-practical 
may  seem  to  make  its  appeal  to  the  eye,  as 
Raphael's  Madonna  or  a  Greek  marble,  or  to  the 
ear,  as  a  noble  piece  of  music,  but  these  make  their 
appeal  through  the  outer  organ  to  the  inner  sense 
or  sensibilities.  The  practical  finds  its  supreme 
achievement  in  a  material  civilization.  Its  stand- 
ards are  scales  and  yardsticks ;  its  results  are 
embodied  in  tons,  square  feet,  and  cubic  yards. 
Its  ends  are  primarily  quantitative.  Its  atmos- 
pheres are  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  the  lust  of  the 
eyes,  and  the  pride  of  life.  At  its  highest  its  re- 
sults are  seen  in  the  center  of  the  metropolis,  as, 
for  instance,  of  that  part  of  London  known  as 
the  Bank,  a  microcosm  of  the  forces  of  the  world. 

96 


96  CHARLES  F.  THWING 

At  its  worst  its  results  are  seen  in  the  selfishness 
and  the  sensualism  of  a  mind  disintegrated,  of  a 
conscience  corrupted,  of  a  will  weak  for  right  and 
strong  for  wrong.  This  microcosm  may  apply  to 
the  individual  or  to  the  community,  as  seen  in  the 
court  of  Louis  XV. 

The  practical  man  is  the  man  who  has  an  eye 
for  the  main  chance,  who  casts  an  anchor  to  the 
windward,  who  seeks  to  be  safe,  who  avoids  risks, 
who  likes  comfort.  He  may  believe  in  education, 
but  if  he  does,  he  believes  in  it  chiefly  because  edu- 
cation helps  him  to  make  more  rather  than  to  be- 
come more;  who,  if  he  believes  in  the  church,  be- 
lieves in  it  for  this  world  and  not  for  other- 
worldliness;  who  wishes  the  community  to  be  well 
housed  and  properly  fed ;  and  who  would  improve 
humanity  by  comforts  and  by  material  forces 
rather  than  by  ideas.  This  man  has  imagination, 
but  it  seldom  rises  above  the  fifth  story  of  the  five 
senses,  and  sometimes  not  above  the  "  third  story 
back."  He  has  no  sky,  no  horizon,  no  "  intima- 
tions of  immortality,"  either  in  life's  prose  or  life's 
verse.  He  may  read  poetry,  but  it  is  rather  Walt 
Whitman  than  Wordsworth.  He  hears  no  sky- 
larks, he  sees  no  Grecian  urns,  he  has  no  vision 
from  peaks  of  Darien. 

The  college  has  nothing  to  do  with  practical 
concerns,  says  one.  It  is  utterly  remote  from 
such  mundane  considerations    and   relationships. 


PREPARATION  FOR  AFFAIRS        97 

The  college  is  a  monastery  placed  far  away  from 
the  world.  The  college  is  a  philosophy  Hke  Hegel's, 
which  is  said  to  be  a  system  shot  out  of  pure  space. 
The  college  buildings  should  be  put  either  on  Mt. 
Sinai  peak  or  in  an  African  desert.  Its  chief  in- 
habitant should  be  Browning's  Grammarian. 

Such  is  the  interpretation  of  one  who  believes 
that  the  college  has  no  relations  at  all  with  prac- 
tical concerns.  The  college  should  be  unpractical. 
It  should  embody  what  a  great  teacher  of  mathe- 
matics is  said  to  have  said  upon  writing  a  formula 
upon  the  blackboard :  "  Thank  heaven  that  can 
be  put  to  no  use !  "  The  unpractical  man,  in  con- 
tinuation of  the  type  of  the  unpractical  college, 
is  he  who  fails  to  adjust  ideals  to  forces,  who 
declines  to  relate  causes  to  effects,  or  effects  to 
causes,  or  conditions  to  conclusions,  either  re- 
mote or  immediate. 

In  these  two  interpretations  so  unlike,  so  almost 
contradictory,  wherein  lies  the  truth.?  As  often 
happens,  the  truth  does  lie  in  the  mean,  not  only 
as  executive  strength,  but  also  as  veracity.  The 
college  has  to  recognize  that  man  is  a  citizen  of  two 
hemispheres,  the  material,  the  visible,  the  audible,  the 
tangible ;  the  immaterial,  the  invisible,  the  inaudible, 
the  intangible.  He  is  not  so  much  a  contradiction, 
as  Pascal  says,  as  he  is  a  union  of  opposites.  He 
is,  indeed,  as  Pascal  does  intimate,  somewhat  akin 
to  the  brutes,  but  he  also  is  somewhat  akin  to 


98  CHARLES  F.  THWING 

the  angels.  He  is  the  subject  of  greatness  and  the 
victim  of  baseness.  He  may  be  a  reed,  the  weakest 
in  nature,  but  he  is  a  reed  that  thinks.  If  he  in- 
habit one  hemisphere  alone,  he  is  only  one-half  a 
man.  By  living  in  both  he  becomes  the  whole, 
the  spherical  man. 

It  is  of  course  acknowledged  that  what  we  call  the 
purely  intellectual  hemisphere  the  college  should 
train.  The  college  should  do  for  man  to-day  what 
Socrates  did  for  Plato  and  Plato  for  his  disciples. 
It  is  to  adopt  and  to  use  the  Athenian,  and  not  the 
Spartan,  type  of  education.  It  is  to  give  acquaint- 
ance with  the  truths  of  life;  to  orient  the  student 
into  a  world  of  citizenship;  to  lead  one  back  into 
the  sources  of  civilization,  and  from  those  sources 
to  create  resources ;  to  help  one  to  discern  and  to 
direct  the  tendencies  of  which  he  is  a  part,  and 
always  and  everywhere  to  create  life  in  his  own 
bosom.  It  is  to  develop  the  non-material,  the 
spiritual  elements  of  the  community  and  of  the 
person. 

But  it  is  also — and  right  here  is  the  crux  of  our 
problem — to  seek  to  discipline  that  part  of  the 
material  hemisphere  of  man  which  lies  closest  and 
nearest  to  the  non-material.  On  this  material  side 
it  is  to  accomplish  five  results:  first,  it  is  to  teach 
one  to  think,  to  think  clearly;  second,  to  teach 
one  to  appreciate,  to  appreciate  sympathetically; 
third,  to  teach  one  to  apply  truth,  to  apply  truth 


PREPARATION  FOR  AFFAIRS        99 

usefully ;  fourth,  to  teach  one  to  work,  and  to  work 
thoroughly ;  and  fifth,  to  teach  one  to  enj  oy,  and 
to  enjoy  fully. 

First,  to  teach  one  to  think,  and  to  think  clearly. 
To  think  is  the  most  precious  intellectual  result  of 
the  college.  Thinking  is  an  art.  It  is,  of  course,  also 
a  science.  But  for  the  college  man  it  is  primarily 
an  art.  An  art  is  learned  by  practicing  it.  Think- 
ing is,  therefore,  learned  by  thinking.  It  repre- 
sents habits  of  intellectual  accuracy,  discrimina- 
tion, comparison,  concentration.  Such  habits  are 
formed  by  being  accurate,  discriminating,  and  by 
the  actual  concentration  of  the  mind.  A  course 
in  education  promotes  such  thinking  better  than 
a  course  in  business.  For  education  represents 
orderliness  and  system  in  intellectual  effort.  The 
effort  proceeds  by  certain  graduated  steps,  from 
the  easy  to  the  less  easy,  from  the  difficult  to  the 
more  difficult.  The  purpose  is  to  train  in  the 
valuation  of  principles,  which  underlie  all  service, 
and  not  in  the  worth  of  rules,  which  are  of  special 
and  narrow  application.  The  man  trained  only  in 
business  of  one  kind  is  not  fitted  to  take  up  business 
of  a  difi^erent  kind.  The  broadly  trained  man  is 
prepared  to  learn  business  of  any  kind,  and  if  busi- 
ness of  one  kind  has  been  learned,  he  is  able  to 
leave  it  to  take  up  work  of  another  kind  without 
difficulty.  The  practice  of  any  art  should  make 
the  one  who  practices  tliis  art  a  better  thinker 


100  CHARLES  F.  THWING 

in  it ;  but  this  advantage  relates  in  a  large  degree 
to  one  who  has  first  approached  the  art  through 
thinking. 

I  suppose  it  may  be  said  that  the  man  who  is 
self-educated  is  usually  very  narrowly  educated. 
He  is  educated  along  and  in  certain  lines.  He  is 
educated,  so  to  speak,  tangentially.  His  thinking, 
too,  is  usually  tangential.  It  lacks  comprehensive- 
ness and  a  sense  of  relations.  It  has  force,  and  the 
endeavors  which  spring  out  of  it  are  forceful;  but 
breadth  is  sacrificed.  To  do  away  with  such 
tangential  education  is  the  purpose  of  the  college. 
Education  should  be  made  a  curve.  It  should 
possess  symmetry.  The  college  represents  a  fine 
communal  force  which  best  draws  that  curve. 
Tangents  are  individual. 

Also,  on  the  material  side,  college  is  to  teach 
one  to  appreciate  sympathetically.  Provincialism 
is,  despite  our  so-called  cosmopolitanism,  one  of 
the  curses  of  modem  life.  Our  cosmopolitanism  is 
often  merely  superficial.  The  college  is  to  teach 
this  semi-materialistic  man  and  provincial  that 
there  is  a  spiritual  world  above  what  he  sees  and 
hears.  It  is  to  bring  him  into  relationship  with 
every  side  of  life's  polygon.  It  is  to  help  him  to 
become  a  citizen  of  the  world  and  to  be  properly 
at  home  in  any  society. 

Third,  the  college  on  the  material  side  is  also 
to  help  each  man  to  apply  the  truths  he  receives, 


PREPARATION  FOR  AFFAIRS       101 

the  powers  which  he  represents,  usefully  unto  the 
highest.  One  does  not  forget  that  one  of  the  great- 
est of  modem  scientists  was  Lord  Kelvin.  A  pure 
scientist  he  was,  but  every  telegram  which  goes 
under  the  sea  bears  in  essence  the  power  of  Kelvin, 
and  every  ship  sailing  the  seas  sails  it  more  safely 
by  reason  of  Kelvin's  compass. 

College  men  of  liberal  training  have  founded  the 
United  States  Geographical  Survey,  the  Weather 
Bureau,  and  many  agricultural  and  experimental 
stations.  Let  it  be  not  forgotten  that  Eli  Whit- 
ney, the  inventor  of  the  cotton  gin,  was  a  graduate 
of  Yale  College  of  the  Class  of  1792,  and  that 
Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  the  inventor  of  the  electric  tel- 
egraph, was  also  a  graduate,  eighteen  years  after. 

Fourth,  education,  on  its  material  side,  is  to 
teach  one  to  work  and  to  work  thoroughly.  It  is 
as  popular  as  it  is,  I  fear,  honest  to  declaim 
against  our  mechanical  looseness  and  slackness.  In 
every  building,  we  know  that  the  hidden  founda- 
tions do  not  go  deep  enough,  that  sand  takes  the 
place  of  cement,  putty  of  lead  in  the  plumbing, 
weak  wooden  beams  for  iron  girders,  cotton  for 
wool,  and  canvas  for  leather  in  the  furnishing.  We 
know  that  too  many  workmen  seek  to  give  the 
least  labor  for  the  most  pay.  The  close  of  the 
eight-hour  day  finds  the  laborer  with  overalls  off 
and  coat  on,  ready  to  go  home.  Now  in  all  prac- 
tical concerns  education  should  teach  a  man  to 


lOa  CHARLES  F.  THWING 

give  an  equivalent  for  what  he  receives.  Educa- 
tion teaches  him  that  in  practical  concerns,  to 
be  honest  in  his  service,  to  be  no  shirk,  to  seek 
for  every  man's  rights  and  his  own  duties,  as  well 
as  for  the  other  man's  duties  and  his  own  rights, 
to  be  a  workman  so  just,  so  careful,  so  considerate, 
so  thorough,  that  even  the  gods  may  approve  of 
his  handicraft.  The  college  should  be  a  hard  task- 
master in  order  to  train  its  man  to  serve  and  to 
live  as  ever  in  liis  "  great  taskmaster's  eye." 

Fifth,  on  the  material  side  also,  the  college  is  to 
train  the  student  to  enjoy  life  fully,  thoroughly, 
to  enter  into  all  cubical  relationships  of  the  length, 
the  depth,  the  height  of  being.  The  college  should 
train  this  man  to  find  delight  in  the  oratorio,  and 
not  to  limit  his  pleasure  to  rag-time,  or  to  "  It's 
a  Long  Way  to  Tipperary."  It  should  help  him 
to  find  satisfaction  in  an  art  museum,  and  not  to 
teach  him  that  the  pictorial  art  does  not  go  beyond 
the  "  movies."  It  should  help  this  graduate  to  have 
resources  in  books  and  not  to  be  obliged  to  build 
a  laboratory  in  his  cellar  to  escape  nocturnal  dull- 
ness. It  should  help  this  business  man,  manufac- 
turer, merchant,  chemist,  banker,  farmer,  to  see 
the  infinite  relations  of  his  work,  to  feel  its  poetry, 
to  be  stirred  by  its  imaginations. 

If  the  college  on  its  material  side  can  give  these 
great  teachings, — to  think  clearly,  to  appreciate 
sympathetically,  to  apply  usefully  to  work  thor- 


PREPARATION  FOR  AFFAIRS       103 

oughlj,  to  enjoy  beautifully, — it  has  done  much, 
very  much,  to  enlarge,  to  deepen,  to  heighten,  to 
enrich,  to  strengthen,  life's  practical  concerns. 

The  four  qualities  most  needed  in  practical  con- 
cerns one  might  say  are  judgment,  energy,  tact, 
patience.  They  are  the  foundation  on  which  the 
four-square  house  of  business  is  built.  The  college 
helps  to  construct  each  of  these  walls.  It  builds 
the  wall  of  judgment,  for  it  trains  one  to  see,  to 
discriminate,  to  relate,  to  infer.  It  builds  the  wall 
of  energy,  for  it  creates  and  it  conserves  strength, 
enlarges  resources,  dissipates  fear,  and  enriches 
power.  It  builds  the  wall  of  tact,  for  it  trains  the 
gentleman.  It  builds  the  wall  of  patience,  for  it 
lifts  the  heart  away  from  the  impact  of  to-day 
onto  the  appreciation  of  yesterday  and  the  vision 
of  to-morrow. 

In  a  word,  I  would  have  this  graduate  in  a  ma- 
terialistic age  serve  that  age  by  being  an  idealistic 
materiahst.  In  a  merchandise  age  I  would  have 
him  serve  his  age  as  an  ideaUstic  merchant.  In  an 
industrial  age  I  would  have  him  serve  his  age  by 
being  an  idealistic  industrialist.  In  an  age  of 
steel  I  would  have  him  put  the  strength,  the  flexi- 
bility, the  adaptiveness  of  steel  into  his  mind,  the 
coolness  of  steel  into  his  eye  to  see  truth  justly, 
the  heat  of  steel  into  his  heart  to  feel  warmly  for 
all  men,  and  the  power  of  steel  into  his  whole  char- 
acter, that  he  may  give  strength  unto  all. 


THE  PRESENT  STATUS  AND 

PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  THE 

COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST 

PRESIDENT  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

The  great  president  of  a  great  university  in 
the  East,  whom  you  are  to  have  the  good  fortune 
to  hear  to-night,  spoke  a  few  days  ago  with  dis- 
paragement of  the  industry  of  a  Latin  student  who 
had  found  that  the  conjunction  "  et  "  was  used  by 
Virgil  in  the  Mneld  5,932.  times  (as  I  recall),  and 
of  the  thesis  of  a  New  York  candidate  for  the 
doctor's  degree  who  discussed  the  interjections 
(nineteen  in  number)  which  appear  in  certain 
poems  of  Terence.  With  such  an  admonitory 
word  concerning  meticulous  scholarship  fresh  in 
mind,  I  dare  not  undertake  to  note  the  permuta- 
tions of  the  entrance  requirements  of  the  Eastern 
colleges,  nor  attempt  to  record  the  ephemeris  of 
their  curricula  in  the  northern  heavens,  where  fair 
Harvard  sits  like  Cassiopeia  in  her  eternal  chair, 
where  the  six  binary  Pleiads  of  Columbia  shine, 
and  where  Amherst  glows  like  Capella  with  a 
spectrum  which,  it  is  claimed  by  some,  most  closely 
resembles  that  of  the  sun  of  our  daily  existence, 

105 


106  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

and  is  thought  by  others  to  resemble  Capella  only 
in  the  respect  that  the  light  of  that  star  is  forty 
years  in  reaching  our  planet. 

Yet  I  realize  that  it  is  only  such  meticulous 
studies  of  the  stars  in  the  academic  skies  which 
wUl  enable  us  to  make  any  accurate  prophecy,  that 
is,  enable  us  to  determine  the  ephemeris  of  to- 
morrow. 

We  are  informed  by  astronomers  that  there  is 
a  clearly  discernible  movement  on  the  part  of  the 
stars  of  heaven,  a  "  star-drift  "  towards  a  certain 
star ;  as  I  recall,  a  star  in  the  constellation  of  Canis 
Major.  That  is  the  supreme  ultimate  fact  of  the 
physical  universe.  And  by  analogy  what  is  really 
of  concern  to  us  is  not  as  to  just  what  positions 
the  several  colleges  in  the  northeastern  heavens 
hold  to-day  or  will  hold  to-morrow,  but  as  to  the 
direction  in  which  they  are  moving,  as  to  what  is 
the  universal  and  ultimate  goal  of  their  move- 
ment. 

We  seek  the  Canis  Major,  that  is,  the  "  place  of 
understanding,"  the  ultimate.  We  wish  to  know 
its  azimuth  and  right  ascension,  or,  better,  its 
terrestrial  latitude  and  longitude. 

Job  sought  it,  saying:  "  Surely  there  is  a  vein 
for  silver  and  a  place  for  gold  where  they  find  it  " ; 
and  after  giving  poetic  intimations  of  courses  in 
meteorology,  geology,  chemistry,  physical  geog- 
raphy, and  engineering,  which  led  towards  it,  he 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST      107 

asks  m  tired  refrain :  "  But  where  is  the  home  of 
wisdom  and  where  is  the  place  of  understanding  ?  " 

Man,  he  added,  has  taken  iron  out  of  the  earth. 

He  has  melted  brass  from  the  stone. 

He  has  made  a  deep  shaft. 

He  has  swung  suspended  afar  from  men. 

He  has  searched  for  stones  in  darkness, 

He  has  carved  the  flint. 

He  has  cleft  the  rock. 

He  has  bound  the  stream  from  overflowing. 

He  has  seen  every  precious  thing. 

He  has  searched  even  into  the  shadows  of  death. 

And  yet,  Job  cries  after  his  summary :  "  Where 
is  the  place  of  understanding?  " 

Since  Job's  day,  man  has  succeeded  in  doing 
many  things  which  only  God  could  then  do  in  his 
designing  the  place  which  no  falcon  had  seen  and 
which  no  lion  had  passed  by ; 

For  man  has  made  a  weight  for  the  winds; 

He  has  decreed  whether  rain  shall  fall  upon  him; 

He  has  found  the  way  of  the  lightning; 

He  has  looked  and  talked  to  the  ends  of  the  earth; 

He  has  beheld  the  infinitesimal; 

He  has  divided  the  invisible  atom; 

He  has  learned  what  is  burning  in  the  hearts  of  the  stars. 

And  still  it  is  asked :  "  Where  is  the  place  of  under- 
standing? " 

It  is  a  long  way  from  the  observations  of  Job 


108  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

to  those  of  William  James,  but  we  find  in  this 
dearly  lost  philosopher  an  intimation  as  to  the 
status  or  prospect  of  the  college,  in  his  part  of 
the  heavens,  which  it  is  my  part  to  sweep  in  these 
few  moments.  With  a  comforting  certitude,  Wil- 
liam James  says  that  a  college  is  a  place  where 
one  learns  to  know  a  good  man  when  one  sees  him. 
It  is,  after  all,  only  the  positive  form  of  Job's 
definition  of  understanding: — James's  is  to  dis- 
cern the  good ;  Job's  was  to  "  depart  from 
evil." 

Whether  the  definition  by  James  is  of  status  or 
prospect  is  not  clear,  but  it  reveals  by  implication 
the  general  location  of  the  ultimate,  the  Eastern 
college  which  is  or  is  to  be. 

When  I  first  passed  up  over  the  Laurel  Hills  of 
Western  Pennsylvania,  a  little  way  to  the  south 
of  this  place  from  the  west  into  what  was  the 
east  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  to  enter  its 
first  university,  Johns  Hopkins,  the  colleges  were, 
I  think,  closer  to  Job's  definition  than  James's  in 
that  more  attention  was  given  to  protecting  from 
the  evil  than  to  aggressive  discerning  of  the  good. 

And  the  institutions  were  not  then  classified  ac- 
cording to  magnitude  or  brilliance  into  Alpha  and 
Beta  stars,  though  there  was  appreciation  of  the 
fact  that  one  star  did  differ  from  another  in  glory. 
There  was  no  spectral  analysis  then.  If  there  had 
been  it  would  have  been  discovered  that  the  mag- 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST      109 

nesium  of  philosophy  and  the  sodium  of  mathematics 
and  the  calcium  of  language  appeared  in  about  the 
same  proportions  in  all.  The  stars  were  just  plain 
stars,  instead  of  composites  or  compounds  of  units. 
There  were  no  great  constellations  even,  such  as 
now  bestud  our  academic  skies — star  clusters  with 
a  dominant  Alpha  star  of  liberal  arts  and  pure 
science  holding  in  close  and  imperious  relationship 
schools  of  medicine,  law,  engineering,  pharmacy, 
veterinary  surgery,  dentistry,  domestic  science, 
etc. ;  no  solar  systems  with  their  planetary  wan- 
derers, the  university  extension  lecturers ;  no  moons 
to  take  up  the  wondrous  tale  of  wisdom  in  even- 
ing courses;  no  brilliant  comets,  those  interna- 
tional exchange  professors,  who  startle  all  our  eyes 
in  the  winter  season  of  the  East.  And  the  great 
"Milky  Way"  of  the  General  Education  Board 
and  the  Carnegie  Foundation  was  not  yet  arching 
the  dome,  with  nourishing  and  incalculable  wealth. 

Seeing  all  this  college  development,  which  I 
have  borrowed  an  astronomical  figure  to  intimate ; 
seeing  the  curricular  moons  and  stars  which  have 
been  ordained,  and  the  provision  of  laboratory  and 
dormitory,  field  and  gymnasium,  I  exclaim  after 
the  manner  of  the  Psalmist :  What  precious  thing 
is  man  that  Thou  art  so  mindful  of  him,  and  the  son 
of  man  that  Thou  visitest  him  even  in  the  Fresh- 
man Dormitory ! 

The  most  impressive  scientific  lecture  I  ever 


110  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

heard,  so  far  as  I  now  remember,  was  in  the  broken 
speech  of  that  great  Scandinavian  scientist,  Ar- 
rhenius,  who  told  how  life  was  propagated,  carried 
from  planet  to  planet,  from  star  to  star, — the  im- 
migrant star-dust  evolving  in  new  sequences  of  life 
on  each  new  star-shore.  So  is  life  developing  in 
its  own  peculiar  and  infinite  sequences  in  each  of 
these  colleges,  though  it  was  propagated  by  the 
same  immigrant,  life-giving  dust.  And  there  is  no 
considerable  generalization  possible. 

When  I  first  knew  of  the  Eastern  colleges  they 
seemed  all,  or  most  of  them,  to  have  foundations 
after  the  fashion  of  the  heaven  which  John 
saw  in  his  apocalyptic  vision.  Need  I  recall  the 
sequence.''  The  first  foundation  was  of  jasper, 
the  second  sapphire,  the  third  chalcedony,  the 
fourth  emerald,  the  fifth  sardonyx,  the  sixth  sar- 
dius,  the  seventh  chrysolyte,  the  eighth  beryl,  the 
ninth  topaz,  the  tenth  chrysoprasus,  the  eleventh 
jacinth,  the  twelfth  amethyst.  What  I  mean  is 
that  the  foundation  stones  or  disciplines  were 
specifically  stratified  and  identified.  There  was, 
however,  no  agreement  as  to  the  size  of  the  stones 
till  President  Butler  came  with  his  College  En- 
trance Examinations  and  insisted  that  if  sapphire 
was  used  it  must  be  so  many  units  long  and  so  many 
cubits  wide,  and  if  there  were  a  Virgilian  amethys- 
tine top  stratum  it  must  be  of  certain  cubic  con- 
tent.    It  was   simply  a  dimensional  standardiza- 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST      111 

tion  of  the  intercollegiate  mind.     But  it  was  a 
great  step  forward. 

The  elementary  and  secondary  schools  were  still 
free  to  use  chrysolyte  or  chrysoprasus,  sardius  or 
sardonyx,  in  whatever  order  they  chose,  or  to  make 
concrete  of  their  precious  stones  if  they  preferred. 
And  newer  and  synthetic  disciplines,  as  contrasted 
with  what  were  known  as  the  "  natural  disciplines," 
were  also  included  in  the  dimensional  or  syllabic 
tables. 

Coincident  with  this  prescription  of  content, 
there  came  the  definition  of  the  time-unit.  So  uni- 
versally has  this  unit,  known  generally  as  the  Car- 
negie unit,  been  adopted,  that  I  have  intimated 
that  it  might  well  be  included  among  the  tables 
of  weights  and  measures  which  appear  in  the  arith- 
metics : 

45  minutes  make  an  "  hour  " 
6  "  hours  "  make  a  "  week  " 

36  "  weeks  "  make  a  "  unit  " 

15  "  units  "  make  a  "  matriculant  " 
5  "matriculant"  hours  (for  one  year)  make 
a  point  or  count 

60  points  or  counts  make  a  degree. 

Here,  then,  is  the  status  reached  by  the  col- 
leges in  the  East:  we  have  entrance  requirements 
standardized  as  to  content  and  time.         , 

But  while  the  length  and  height  and  depth  of 
the  several  foundation  stones  have  been  prevised 


112  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

and  adopted,  and  while  twelve  foundation  years, 
elementary  and  secondary,  are  indicated  in  the 
specifications  of  practically  every  Eastern  college, 
there  is  now  a  greater  variety  in  the  foundation 
material:  chrysoprasis,  which  is  Greek,  is  seldom 
used;  sardius,  which  is  Latin,  is  no  longer  uni- 
versal. Instead  are  found  stones  of  disciplines  of 
more  recent  origin:  sedimentary  rocks,  deposited 
by  modem  experience,  synthetic  stones,  made  in 
scientific  laboratories.  Indeed,  the  secondary 
school  builders,  who  are  engaged  in  the  laying  of 
foundations  for  life  as  well  as  for  college — and 
mainly  for  life — are  more  and  more  insistent  that 
whatever  is  used  for  the  life  foundations  shall  be 
accepted  as  suitable  material  for  the  college  en- 
trance: Greek  or  biology. 

There  is  prejudice  against  synthetic  articles 
which  are  "  just  as  good."  There  is  a  prejudice 
in  favor  of  the  old  labels.  Cottonseed  olive  oil 
may  have  the  carbon,  oxygen,  and  hydrogen  in  the 
same  proportions  as  the  oil  produced  from  the  fruit 
of  Minerva's  tree;  terra  cotta  (man-cooked  earth) 
may  be  more  lasting  than  marble  God-composed, 
reenforced  concrete  than  building  stone,  but  it  is 
only  slowly  that  inherited  appraisements  are  modi- 
fied. 

This  admission  of  new  disciplines  In  the  sec- 
ondary period,  with  selective  liberty,  has  resulted 
in  enrichment,  as  in  the  case  of  the  college  cur- 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST      113 

riculum,  but  there  are  signs  that  asterism  or  con- 
stellating is  setting  in  these  as  in  the  collegiate 
system.  I  have  no  prophecy  to  make  here  except 
of  a  thought  which  came  to  me  in  midocean  last 
year — out  where  provincial  and  national  consid- 
erations are  less  disturbing — the  thought  that  if 
we  could  but  bring  together  and  into  comparison 
the  content  of  what  each  people  thinks  it  most  es- 
sential that  its  children  should  receive,  up  to  the 
age  of  sixteen,  let  us  say,  through  formal  teaching 
out  of  its  own  experience  and  that  of  the  race — 
what  information,  what  discipline — ^we  should, 
after  ehminating  that  which  is  local  and  peculiar 
to  each  people,  reach  the  race's  educational  founda- 
tions. We  should  find  what  are  accounted  the  vital, 
elemental,  conscious  tuitions  of  what  President 
Butler  calls  the  "  international  mind,'*  of  the  race 
mind,  which,  as  a  poet-teacher,  Woodbury,  has  put 
it,  has  been  "  building  itself  from  immemorial  time 
out  of  this  mystery  of  thought  and  passion,  as 
generation  after  generation  kneels  and  fights  and 
fades,  takes  unerringly  the  best  that  anywhere 
comes  to  be  in  all  the  world,  holds  to  it  with  the 
cling  of  fate,  and  lets  all  else  fall  into  oblivion." 
I  believe  that  though  this  formal  tuition,  which 
every  people  gives  to  its  children,  is  colored  by 
prejudice  and  restrained  by  tradition  and  dis- 
torted by  individual  ignorance  and  selfishness,  it 
yet  gives  a  clear  indication  of  the  disciplines  and 


114»  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

knowledges  by  which  the  race  is  to  rise.  It  is  that 
genius  of  the  species  which,  as  Maeterlinck  says 
of  plants,  is  to  save  it  from  the  stupidity  of  the 
individual.  It  is  that  which  gives  one  confidence  in 
a  democracy,  in  the  great,  deep  instincts  of  the 
race. 

Upon  these  deep  racial  foundations  are  these 
colleges  East  or  West  to  be  built  and  not  upon  an 
incidental  art  or  upon  elected  fragments  of  this  or 
that,  valuable  as  they  may  be  as  a  basis  for  certain 
life  occupations. 

New  disciplines  are  to  be  admitted  to  these 
foundations ;  the  new  racial  acquisitions  must  be 
gradually  embodied  as  a  result  of  the  new  uses 
which  the  race  is  making  of  this  earth  and  uni- 
verse, but  their  values  must  be  tested,  whether 
you  use  the  figure  of  nutrition  or  stress  and  strain. 

There  is  need,  incidentally,  of  a  great  labora- 
tory for  the  study  of  such  nutritive  values,  such 
intellectual  physics,  entrance  qualitative  analysis, 
— for  such  studies  as  Thorndike,  of  Columbia,  for 
example,  is  carrying  out. 

I  hold  to  the  Apocalyptical  figure  a  moment 
longer,  until  I  have  said  that  we  are  now  at  one  of 
the  many  gates  into  the  place  of  understanding 
(for  as  there  are  many  gates  pictured  for  the 
place  of  ultimate  happiness,  so  are  there  many 
for  this  place  but  set  each  at  the  same  founda- 
tional height). 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST      115 

And  if  I,  unable  to  describe,  in  any  detail  or  in 
any  reliable  generalizations,  the  colleges  of  the 
East  as  they  actually  are,  tell  you,  having  led 
the  way  to  their  gates,  what  I  see  them  to  be  in  the 
prospect  or  in  probable  future  of  my  confident 
hope,  and  any  assisting  effort  that  I  can  give,  if  I 
can  point  you  to  the  place  in  the  heavens  to  which 
they  are  moving,  I  beg  you  will  let  that  be  my 
contribution  to  this  symposium. 

The  multiple  "  place  of  understanding  "  is  the 
place  not  only  of  better  compensation,  of  higher 
specialization,  of  longer  days,  of  longer  years,  or 
nights  as  well  as  days,  but  the  place  where  the 
world  is  "  reborn  in  the  young  soul  "  (to  quote  my 
poet-teacher  again),  where  the  pollen  of  the  past's 
richest,  noblest  flowering  is  caught  into  a  fresh- 
blown  mind — a  mind  which  would  have  been  sterile, 
without  these  microspores,  these  microcosmic  seeds 
scattered  from  a  rich  world  mind; — the  place 
where  through  disciplines,  and  knowledges,  the  lit- 
eratures, sciences,  and  arts,  one  enters  into  a  race 
mind,  goes  out  into  the  bush  as  the  Australian 
youth  with  the  sage  of  his  tribe  to  learn  its  solemn 
secrets, — that  is,  into  an  understanding  of  the 
"  continuing  sacrifice  "  through  which  one  age  has 
fed  the  next,  one  culture  has  given  its  fruit  to  an- 
other, one  mind  has  lighted  a  generation,  while 
burning  itself  out. 

And  the  curricula  are  to  be  molded  not  primar- 


116  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

ily  by  pedagogists,  but  by  great  poets  and  philoso- 
phers of  science,  the  transfigurers  who  will  fuse 
the  knowledges  through  new  interpretations,  bring 
to  youth  a  world  literature,  an  all-embracing  sci- 
ence, a  synoptic,  social  gospel,  and  a  practical 
philosophy,  whose  supreme  end,  as  Kant  said,  is  to 
find  "  the  method  of  educating  and  niling  man- 
kind." Precursors  and  transfigurers,  who  will  con- 
vert atom  and  molecule,  ion  and  electron,  root  and 
blossom  into  spiritual  phenomena  and  forces,  even 
as  he  who  first  dreamed  of  the  atomic  theory  and 
laid  aside  his  own  affairs  to  learn  the  nature  of 
things  (natura  verum)  and  relate  them  to  the  na- 
ture of  the  gods  (natura  deorum).  I  do  not  ven- 
ture to  predict  the  detail  of  these  curricula,  but  I 
do  know  that  they  will  not  be  gerrymandered  by 
softness  or  narrowness  or  numerical  avarice. 

They  are  to  be  curricula  of  personal  salvation 
(for  I  borrow  the  intimation  of  C.  Hanford  Hen- 
derson's answer  to  the  august  question,  "  What  is 
it  to  be  educated  .P  "  that  "  education  and  personal 
salvation  are  one  and  the  same  thing  "). 

I  have  been  impressed,  rereading  Dante's 
"  Divine  Comedy,"  by  the  wonderful  discrimina- 
tion shown  in  providing  for  the  punishment  of 
souls  lost  or  in  limbo.  There  is  not  a  prescribed  or 
elective  number  of  objective  standard  units  of 
agony  to  be  endured.  Such  an  inferno  or  purga- 
torio  would  have  made  his  great  epic  as  uninterest- 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST      117 

ing  and  colorless  as  the  average  college  catalogue. 
No.  His  punishments  take  character  of  the  souls 
of  the  men  who  are  suffering.  Their  tasks  are 
fitted  to  their  soul's  needs.  They  are  not  simply 
doing  things,  pursuing  purgatorial  and  infernal 
vocations ;  they  are  working  out  their  soul's  salva- 
tion or  their  soul's  eternal  torment. 

And  that  curriculum  of  salvation  is  to  be  vitally, 
daily  related  with  the  earth  life,  the  home,  the 
community,  the  state,  the  world, — ^with  the  race 
mind. 

These  colleges  are  not  to  be  like  unto  the  col- 
leges which  Samuel  Butler  describes  (in  that  satire 
"  Erewhon  "  which  Augustine  Birrell  has  called  the 
best  of  its  kind  since  Gulliver) — the  Colleges  of 
Unreason,  where  the  principal  study  was  "  hypo- 
thetics,"  where  they  argued  that  to  teach  a  boy 
merely  the  nature  of  things  which  existed  in  the 
world  around  him  would  be  giving  him  but  a  narrow 
and  shallow  conception  of  the  universe,  which  it 
was  urged  might  contain  all  manner  of  things 
which  were  not  now  found  therein,  and  where  they 
spent  their  time  in  imagining  all  sorts  of  utterly 
strange  and  impossible  contingencies,  conversing 
even  in  a  hypothetical  language  and  having,  in- 
deed, to  maintain  professorship  of  Unreason  and 
Evasion  in  order  to  preserve  vested  opinions 
and  traditional  creeds  out  of  which  the  race  has 
risen. 


118  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

For  the  colleges  which  I  am  describing  are  to 
be  ready,  alert,  to  weave  into  their  curricula  what 
the  new  human  uses  of  the  world  add  to  the  race's 
consciousness  so  far  as  it  can  be  interpreted  and 
is  vital  to  be  preserved. 

I  had  once  to  defend  a  college  course  which  was 
conventionally  so  uncultural  that  it  was  necessary 
to  open  the  windows.  It  was  a  course  in  public 
health.  Going  one  day  to  the  laboratory  I  had  diffi- 
culty at  first  in  staying  in  the  room.  A  half-dozen 
college  men  were  standing  around  the  carcass  of  a 
cow  that  had  died  or  had  been  put  to  death  because 
of  tuberculosis.  "Uncultural?"  I  said.  "These 
young  men  are  preparing  themselves  to  perform  the 
duties  of  an  office  which  is  the  nearest  of  all  our  ex- 
isting public  functions  to  those  of  the  most  sacred 
official  in  ancient  life."  We  have  the  highest 
classical  prototype  for  them.  He  was  the  harus- 
pex  who  examined  the  entrails  of  animals  in  order 
to  divine  the  will  of  the  gods.  These  young  men 
were  examining  the  interior  parts  of  a  cow  in  order 
to  interpret  the  laws  of  God  to  men.  If  Virgil 
had  only  put  this  into  his  Georgics,  the  process 
might  have  risen  to  cultural  dignity. 

If  this  multiple  college  is  to  be  merely  or  chiefly 
a  place  of  discipline,  then  its  tasks  might  better  be 
given  over  to  the  high  schools,  to  the  gymnasia.  If 
it  is  to  be  a  place  of  special  preparation  for  life, 
then  it  would  better  give  way  to  the  professional, 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  EAST      119 

the  technical  school,  the  university.  If  it  is  to  be 
a  place  merely  through  which  to  attain,  in  an  agree- 
able way,  social  position  and  conventional  culture, 
to  take  part  in  contests  of  bodily  strength  and 
skill,  or  to  enjoy  only  the  companionships  and 
friendships  of  living  (that  is,  if  it  is  to  be  a  great 
college,  country  or  city,  club),  it  is  perhaps  hardly 
worth  preserving  as  an  American  institution.  But 
if  it  is  to  be  for  the  many  (what  it  has  been,  thank 
God,  for  the  few),  if  it  is  to  be  for  all  the  ft,  a 
place  of  understanding,  of  rebirth,  of  entering  the 
race  mind,  then  is  the  college  which  I  see  in  pros- 
pect the  most  precious  of  all  our  educational  pos- 
sessions. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  have  made  it  sufficiently 
clear  in  outline  or  curriculum  so  that  you  can  even 
tell  (to  borrow  an  observation  of  Gilbert  Chester- 
ton's) whether  it  is  a  "  cloud  "  or  a  "  cape,"  a 
star  or  a  light  upon  earth.  And  this  would  be  an 
unhappy  attempt  at  definition  if  I  left  you  in 
doubt,  for,  as  Chesterton  has  further  said,  the 
most  dangerous  ideals  are  those  which  may  be 
taken  for  something  practical  and  the  most  danger- 
ous practical  things  are  those  which  are  taken  for 
the  ideal. 

But  I  assure  you  that  the  thing  I  see  is  a 
"  cape  "  and  not  a  "  cloud,"  that  it  is  something 
substantial  which  will  build  itself  impregnably  not 
alone  on  some  "  cape  sublime  "  frowning  upon  the 


im  JOHN  H.  FINLEY 

idle  foam  of  time,  but  in  whatever  latitude  or  longi- 
tude colleges  stand  with  such  a  purpose  as  that 
which  I  have  tried  to  define, — there  gather  great 
souls  as  teachers.  This  is  the  prospect  that  I  have 
in  hope  and  desire  for  the  colleges  of  the  East. 


THE     PRESENT      STATUS     AND 

PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  THE 

COLLEGE  IN  THE  SOUTH 

PRESIDENT  WILLIAM  P.  FEW 

The  development  of  American  institutions  of 
higher  education  is  one  of  the  outstanding  facts  of 
our  time;  but  this  development  has  largely  taken 
place  within  the  last  fifty  years.  And  while  this 
development  in  other  parts  of  the  country  has 
been  going  on,  the  educational  history  of  the 
Southern  States  has  been  interrupted  by  the 
devastations  of  civil  war,  by  the  nightmare  of  re- 
construction, and  by  long,  tedious  years  of  con- 
valescence. 

For  a  good  part  of  the  past  half-century  educa- 
tional conditions  in  the  Southern  States  have  there- 
fore been  altogether  chaotic.  The  circumstances 
considered,  however,  much  has  been  accomplished 
by  self-sacrificing  and  high-minded  men  and 
women.  These  willing  and  capable  workers  for 
their  devotion  to  great  causes  and  for  their  per- 
sonal qualities  deserve  high  rank  among  Amer- 
ican teachers  of  their  generation.  But  they  have 
121 


122  WILLIAM  P.  FEW 

been  hampered  by  lack  of  material  and  educational 
equipment. 

In  these  impoverished  and  confused  times 
it  has  been  difficult  to  standardize  our  South- 
ern colleges  at  the  level  of  the  best  educational 
thought  and  practice.  But  towards  this  end  sev- 
eral causes  have  steadily  worked.  Such  has  been 
an  organization,  for  example,  like  the  Association 
of  Colleges  and  Preparatory  Schools  of  the  South- 
em  States,  begun  nineteen  years  ago  with  a  mem- 
bership of  six  colleges  and  now  composed  of  all  the 
stronger  colleges  and  preparatory  schools.  This 
association  exists  for  the  promotion  of  better  edu- 
cational standards  and  ideals,  and  it  has  from  the 
beginning  been  an  influence  for  good. 

Another  such  agency  is  a  movement  started  by 
the  Southern  Methodist  Church  seventeen  years 
ago.  In  the  year  1898  the  General  Conference  of 
this  church  created  an  educational  commission  to 
consist  of  ten  practical  educators  who  should  have 
full  authority  to  formulate  minimum  requirements 
for  admission  and  graduation,  these  requirements 
to  be  enforced  by  all  colleges  affiliated  with  the 
church.  Since  that  date  the  commission  has  met 
at  least  once  during  each  quadrennium  and  has  pre- 
scribed standards  by  which  all  colleges  affiliated 
with  this  church  have  been  classified. 

A  third  agency,  important  though  its  influence 
on  college  standards  has  been  indirectly  exerted,  is 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  SOUTH    123 

the  General  Education  Board  of  New  York.  This 
board  has  set  up  no  educational  standards  to  which 
colleges  that  would  seek  its  aid  must  conform. 
But  it  has  made  wise  and  statesmanlike  efforts  to 
strengthen  some  of  the  more  promising  colleges  ;  it 
has  had  on  exhibition  in  its  office  carefully  col- 
lected data  on  Southern  colleges ;  and  it  has  done 
something  towards  bringing  Southern  colleges  into 
contact  with  educational  methods  and  men  in  other 
parts  of  the  country.  All  of  these  things  have  had 
a  tendency  to  lift  the  general  level  and  so  to  raise 
the  educational  standards  of  Southern  colleges. 

Still  another  agency  is  the  Carnegie  Foundation 
for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching.  The  Founda- 
tion adopted  a  definition  of  a  college  and  a  stand- 
ard of  entrance  requirements,  and  declined  to  put 
on  the  Foundation  any  institutions  that  did  not 
conform  to  its  standards.  The  desire  to  be  placed 
on  the  Carnegie  Foundation  has  influenced  very 
few  Southern  colleges  to  raise  their  standards. 
But  the  Foundation  has  exerted  a  still  more  potent 
influence.  President  Pritchett  made  a  thorough- 
going study  of  American  colleges  and  published  the 
results.  He  gave  each  college  a  rating  on  the  basis 
of  its  admission  requirements.  This  publication 
had  a  wide  circulation  and  exerted  an  unprece- 
dented influence. 

The  last  agency  which  I  shall  mention,  and  the 
one  which  is  intrinsically  the  most  interesting  and 


124  WILLIAM  P.  FEW 

ultimately  the  most  important,  is  the  small  number 
of  individual  institutions  that  have,  through  all  the 
cross  purposes  and  warring  forces  of  our  years 
of  educational  wandering,  been  courageous  enough 
and  far-seeing  enough  to  stand  and  call  aloud,  as 
the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness,  for  a  bet- 
ter order  of  things,  and  that  have  not  hesitated  to 
sacrifice  in  so  great  a  cause  the  prestige  of  num- 
bers and  the  more  immediately  satisfying  compen- 
sation of  tuition  fees.  These  colleges  have  stood 
as  beacons  of  light  along  the  hard  road  of  progress 
and  as  bulwarks  of  strength  against  which  the  in- 
tellectual confusions,  and  even  at  times  the  surging 
passions  of  the  hour,  have  dashed  themselves  in 
vain.  To  such  colleges — and  they  have  been  found 
in  all  parts  of  the  Union,  North  and  South — the 
country  owes  a  debt  of  gratitude  it  can  never  pay. 
Such  forces  as  these,  though  different  in  origin 
and  different  in  the  method  and  sphere  of  their 
operation,  have  all  been  working  together  towards 
one  end, — the  making  of  stronger,  better  equipped, 
and  more  serviceable  institutions  of  the  higher 
learning  throughout  the  Southern  States.  And 
they  have  all  been  strengthened  by  the  new  pros- 
perity and  hope  that  in  recent  years  have  come  to 
Southern  people.  Improvement  is  now  everywhere 
evident  and  is  sure,  I  think,  to  go  on  rapidly. 
Movements  in  our  time  when  once  set  forward  are 
apt  to  be  quick  and  far-reaching  in  their  results. 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  SOUTH    125 

The  South  has  already  a  number  of  colleges  that 
in  standards  of  work,  in  ideals  of  excellence,  and  in 
the  quality  of  the  men  who  teach  and  the  quality 
of  the  men  who  are  taught  are  thoroughly  respect- 
able, even  when  judged  in  the  light  of  the  great 
colleges  of  the  world.  Colleges  of  this  sort  are  of 
inestimable  value  in  Southern  civilization.  They 
will  set  the  pace  for  the  intellectual  life,  and 
through  their  influence  on  the  lower  schools  and 
through  the  leaders  of  the  people  that  they  sup- 
ply will  have  a  large  share  in  shaping  and  molding 
the  structure  of  our  entire  civilization.  The  col- 
leges themselves  are  being  rapidly  refashioned  and, 
in  a  period  of  flux  and  change  now,  they  are  never- 
theless taking  a  setting  and  direction  that  are  apt 
to  fix  their  character  and  work  for  many  years  to 
come. 

Southern  colleges,  then,  coming  into  their 
period  of  growth  at  a  time  when  colleges  in 
other  parts  of  the  country  have  reached  ma- 
turity, have  the  extraordinary  opportunity  to 
develop  in  the  light  of  the  experience  of  others. 
We  ought  to  learn  from  the  mistakes  of 
others  as  well  as  from  their  successes.  And 
the  future  of  our  colleges  wiU  depend  on  how  well 
we  learn  our  lesson.  Especially  must  we  learn 
how  to  bring  the  processes  of  education  eff'ectively 
to  bear  on  a  larger  proportion  of  students.  The 
growing  importance  that  secondary  concerns  hold 


126  WILLIAM  P.  FEW 

in  the  thought  of  undergraduates  is  more  and  more 
tending  to  obscure  the  true  ends  of  a  college  course. 
If  we  will  take  command  of  the  situation  before 
the  tyranny  of  public  opinion  is  fastened  upon  us 
by  students,  young  alumni,  and  communities 
taught  to  demand  this  sort  of  entertainment  at 
the  hands  of  colleges,  then  I  believe  it  will  be  pos- 
sible for  us  to  shift  the  center  of  interest  from 
athletics  and  other  equally  irrelevant  undergradu- 
ate absorptions  to  the  intellectual  pursuits  and 
wholesome  recreations  that  are  proper  to  college 
life.  This  shifting  of  the  center  of  gravity  will  be 
helped  by  adequate  regulation  and  due  subordina- 
tion of  athletics ;  by  demanding  strict  attendance 
upon  college  duties ;  by  exacting  a  reasonable 
amount  of  intellectual  work;  and  by  enforcing 
rigorous  standards  of  scholarship.  In  developing 
our  colleges  we  have  the  chance  to  put  upon  self- 
cultivation  and  wholesome  living  an  emphasis  they 
do  not  now  usually  get  in  American  colleges. 

Our  opportunity  consists  partly  too  in  strength- 
ening the  personal  element  in  education  and 
thereby  attaining  the  end  for  which  colleges  pri- 
marily exist,  that  is,  to  bring  the  right  kind  of 
teacher  into  sympathetic  and  helpful  contact  with 
the  right  kind  of  student  under  conditions  that 
will  make  for  the  highest  success  and  happiness  of 
both  teacher  and  student.  The  pioneer  stage  in 
American  education  has  passed.    The  propaganda 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  SOUTH    127 

for  enlarged  and  improved  educational  machinery 
and  organization  has  won.  In  nearly  all  of  our 
states  education  as  an  opportunity  for  every  youth 
has  been  achieved.  The  watchword  henceforth  is 
to  be  not  more  education  but  better.  And  this 
better  education,  we  all  concede,  can  only  come 
through  better  teachers.  How  to  get  better  teach- 
ers is  a  question  much  discussed.  "Higher 
salaries,"  says  one.  "  Better  technical  training," 
says  another.  "  More  expensive  equipment  in 
buildings,  laboratories,  libraries,  playgrounds," 
say  still  others. 

But  success  in  this  difficult  field,  I  believe,  lies 
rather  in  magnifying  the  office  of  the  teacher,  and 
in  giving  to  education  itself  a  larger  meaning  and 
mission  for  our  whole  national  life.  Hirelings 
never  can  give  the  truest  service.  The  measuring 
of  a  man  by  the  wage  scale  can  never  lift  teaching 
above  a  stale  and  unprofitable  business. 

Over  against  this  conception  we  now  have  the 
opportunity  to  set  the  doctrine  of  the  teacher  as  a 
worker  at  the  hard  tasks  of  society,  as  a  builder 
of  civilization,  who,  if  he  be  efficient  enough,  may 
become  a  shaping,  transforming  influence  like 
Moses  or  Socrates.  Thoughts  and  aspirations  are 
after  all  the  greatest  forces  in  civilization,  and 
from  educators  and  those  they  educate  must  come 
this  high  leadership  of  ideas  and  ideals  in  the  serv- 
ice of  the  republic.     The  measure  of  the  teacher's 


1»8  WILLIAM  P.  FEW 

influence  is  not  the  amount  or  quality  of  intellec- 
tual nourishment  that  we  may  dole  out  to  docile 
youth,  but  the  kind  of  guidance  he  gives  to  indi- 
vidual minds,  to  communities,  and  to  states  and  the 
moral  energy  that  he  succeeds  in  producing.  And 
teachers  of  this  higher  sort  can  never  be  bought. 

Expert  training  is  not  our  supreme  need,  either. 
For  teachers,  our  schools  of  all  grades  need  not 
simply  experts  in  the  several  branches  of  learning, 
but  men  and  women  of  ideas  and  power.  The  too 
exclusive  use  of  scholarship  tests  in  the  selecting 
of  teachers  is,  in  my  judgment,  one  of  the  gravest 
defects  in  modem  education,  especially  in  our 
American  colleges  and  universities.  Men  and 
women  of  ideas  and  originating  power  are  needed 
at  all  times,  but  they  would  seem  to  be  especially 
needed  in  times  of  unsettlement  and  rapid  change. 
And  in  spite  of  all  misgivings,  most  competent  men 
actually  at  the  work  of  upbuilding  and  rebuilding 
Southern  civilization  believe  that  we  are  standing 
now  at  the  very  threshold  of  a  new  era  of  growth 
and  development.  The  belief  itself,  even  if  it  were 
not  so  amply  justified  by  the  facts,  would  tend  to 
produce  the  expected  result.  An  age  of  hopeful- 
ness is  apt  to  be  an  age  of  achievement. 

I  do  not  underestimate  equipment  and  organiza- 
tion, but  I  would  emphasize  the  fact,  which  is  so 
often  overlooked  in  our  time,  that  these  things  are 
of  no  value  except  in  so  far  as  they  furnish  the 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  SOUTH    129 

means  by  which  competent  men  and  women  may 
work  effectively.  The  one  sure  way  to  promote  the 
welfare  of  the  state  and  nation  is  to  build  sound- 
ness into  the  mind  and  character  of  the  youth  of 
our  country.  Those  who  have  command  of  this 
source  of  power  must  not  mistake  themselves  or  be 
mistaken  by  others  for  innocent  pedagogues  and 
school-keepers.  Affording  as  it  does  opportunity 
for  the  exercise  of  creative  ability  and  for  a  high 
order  of  usefulness,  life  for  us  teachers,  we  ought 
to  feel,  is  not  a  weak  and  passive  thing,  but  a  great 
and  noble  calling. 

Despite  some  superficial  appearances  to  the  con- 
trary and  despite  some  real  difficulties  that  must  be 
overcome,  I  am  convinced  that  this  section  has  the 
best  chance  in  America  to  build  up  at  least  a  few, 
I  will  not  say  big,  but  genuinely  great  educational 
institutions  within  this  generation.  And  therefore, 
I  think  there  never  was  in  the  history  of  the  world  a 
more  inviting  field  for  teachers  with  building  power 
than  right  here  and  now ;  and  this  sort  of  teacher 
is  going  to  be  developed  and  held  not  by  institu- 
tions that  put  their  faith  in  size,  in  numbers,  in 
big  material  resources,  but  rather  by  those  that  are 
dedicated  to  sound  ideas  and  disciplined  by  sacri- 
fice in  the  causes  of  men.  For  it  is  never  the  ma- 
terial but  the  ideal  that  abides  and  commands. 

The  greatness  of  our  colleges  will  depend  upon  the 
elevation  of  the  teaching  profession,  and  the  eleva- 


180  WILLIAM  P.  FEW 

tion  of  the  teaching  profession  does  not  depend  upon 
higher  salaries,  better  technical  training,  or  more 
elaborate  equipment,  but  upon  giving  it  the  proper 
dignity  and  importance  in  our  life.  This  involves 
a  new  and  truer  popular  understanding  of  educa- 
tion. And  education  we  must  come  to  regard  not 
as  an  agency  for  making  skilled  wage-earners  or 
experts  in  knowledge,  but  for  developing  men  of 
moral  and  intellectual  competence.  This  defin- 
ing of  education  to  include  not  merely  the  train- 
ing of  the  hands  or  the  mind  but  the  shaping 
of  the  whole  personality  lifts  the  teaching  pro- 
fession into  a  great  art  in  which  excellence  is  as 
well  worth  striving  for  as  in  poetry  or  architecture, 
and  in  which  success  is  perhaps  harder  to  achieve ; 
for  this  art  deals  with  the  most  difficult  as  well  as 
the  most  precious  material  in  the  world. 

And  I  have  the  faith  to  believe  that  at  least  some 
of  our  colleges  will  go  this  way  to  greatness. 


THE  PRESENT  STATUS  AND 

PROBABLE  FUTURE  OF  THE 

COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST 

PRESIDENT  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

The  college  has  a  well  differentiated  character 
and  history  in  the  educational  evolution  of  the 
United  States.  It  was  the  earliest  organized  insti- 
tution for  the  higher  learning  in  the  country,  and 
has  so  maintained  its  position  and  continued  its 
contribution  to  the  moral  and  intellectual  life  of 
the  nation  that,  as  has  been  said  of  it  by  our  ablest 
expert,  it  is  "  the  most  permanent  factor  in  our 
educational  system." 

Successfully  it  has  borne  axiverse  criticism, 
wisely  adjusted  itself  to  the  growth  of  methods 
while  broadening  its  range  of  subjects  whenever 
reasonable  demand  has  arisen;  but  no  foundation 
has  so  persistently  and  consistently  held  to  its  main 
purpose  and  its  high  ideals  as  the  American  col- 
lege. Universities,  technical  education,  public 
school  systems,  have  passed  through  distinct  modi- 
fications, while  with  its  dominating  ethical  and  in- 
tellectual purpose  it  has  steadily  and  persistently 
maintained  its  unifying  ideal. 

131 


13a  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

The  all-controlling  end  of  the  true  college  has 
been,  is  and  always  must  be,  to  train  men.  It 
exists  primarily  to  produce  persons  of  character 
and  intelligence,  who  as  such  can  hold  successfully 
the  position  to  which  they  are  called,  and  do  well 
the  work  for  which  they  are  especially  fitted. 

The  Enghsh  colleges  from  which  the  American 
sprang,  seeking  to  discover  truth  by  means  of 
scholarship,  with  their  tutorial  system  and  more 
than  a  score  of  presidents  for  three  thousand 
students,  have  made  the  spirit  of  their  training 
individualistic  in  order  to  produce  leaders  in  the 
political,  social,  religious,  and  intellectual  life  of 
that  empire.  The  Oxford  and  Cambridge  colleges 
have  been  the  center  of  "  the  humanities,"  because 
of  their  intellectual  and  moral  discipline.  Affirm- 
ing that  these  studies  appeal  directly  to  "  the  finer 
instincts  and  affections,"  they  have  produced  fully 
developed  men  with  noble  sentiments  and  strength 
of  character.  These  colleges  are  the  mothers  of 
commanding  leaders  and  great  movements.  With- 
out them  England's  political,  ethical,  and  religious 
life  would  have  been  unspeakably  less  powerful. 
The  English  college  is  the  representative  of  the 
strength  of  her  character  and  her  institutions. 

It  was  this  that  Lord  Bryce  so  strongly  em- 
phasized in  his  memorable  address,  when  the 
Rhodes  Scholarships  were  established  at  Oxford,  as 
he  urged  that  there  should  be  the  utmost  possible 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST     133 

degree  of  efficiency  in  equipment  and  instruction 
for  scientific  education;  but  he  insisted  still  more 
strongly  that  to  subordinate  the  interests  of  the 
humanities  to  those  of  science  is  deliberately  to 
dethrone  the  essential  function  of  the  college.  He 
agreed  that  there  should  be  a  scientific  foundation 
for  every  department  of  industry  in  its  appli- 
cation to  the  arts  of  life,  but  said  that  this 
is  not  the  primary  function  of  the  college, 
which  has  a  much  more  fundamental  and  essential 
part  to  play  in  the  creation  of  the  leadership  of 
the  nation. 

The  mission  of  the  college  has  been  and  always 
must  be,  in  the  old  world  and  the  new,  in  the  East 
and  in  the  West,  to  train  men,  by  means  of  teach- 
ing, to  be  servants  of  humanity.  The  great  busi- 
ness of  the  college  is  to  teach,  and  by  teaching  to 
fit  its  students  to  become  serviceable  in  the  life  of 
the  world. 

It  is  not  so  much  what  it  teaches  and  how  many 
subjects;  but  something  it  must  teach  so  that  its 
graduates  shall  be  strong  to  serve,  and  powerful 
enough  to  battle  the  evil  of  the  world,  and  con- 
struct virtue  in  the  characters  of  men  and  women. 
This  was  why  the  Oxford  College  taught  the  hu- 
manities, why  the  famous  University  of  Salerno 
had  but  one  faculty;  while  both  alike  sought  to 
create  scholars  who  should  "  serve  their  fellow- 
men." 


Idi  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

The  main  purpose  of  the  German  gymnasium 
and  university  is  to  discover  truth  and  to  make  it 
known  in  all  its  relations ;  the  English  and  Amer- 
ican college  has  always  sought  to  discover  truth 
by  scholarship  and  train  men  for  service.  This 
must  ever  be  its  exalted  function,  and  its  perma- 
nency is  conditioned  upon  remaining  true  to  its 
birthright  and  the  highest  of  all  educational  pre- 
rogatives. To  be  false  to  the  sacred  trust  which 
the  college  has  placed  in  the  keeping  of  its  trus- 
tees and  faculties  is  not  only  to  sell  one's  birth- 
right for  pottage,  but  it  is  a  sacrifice  of  the  most 
momentous  issues  in  the  whole  educational  move- 
ment. 

The  college  by  no  means  assumes  that  it  alone 
has  assigned  to  it  the  ethical  training  of  the  lead- 
ers of  the  nation;  but  it  stands  as  no  other  in- 
stitution by  its  traditions,  its  history  and  ideals, 
as  a  foundation  whose  dominating  end  is  the  prepa- 
ration of  students  for  intellectual  and  moral  leader- 
ship. This  is  the  noblest  of  all  missions  in  the 
training  of  the  youth  of  a  nation. 

If  the  American  college  loses  sight  of  this  sacred 
duty,  it  becomes  false  to  its  trust,  recreant  and 
faithless  before  the  most  essential  of  all  the  ends 
for  which  an  educational  movement  can  exist.  All 
attacks  upon  its  function,  all  would-be  modifica- 
tions of  its  range  and  scope,  and  of  its  four  years 
of  opportunity  for  study  and  spiritual  growth,  are 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST     135 

the  outcome  of  a  misconception  of  the  end  which 
led  to  its  foundation. 

Lord  Brjce's  position  is  the  true  one.  There 
should  be  the  utmost  possible  degree  of  efficiency 
in  scientific  education;  but  to  subordinate  purely 
intellectual  and  moral  discipline  to  the  interests  of 
science  is  not  only  to  dethrone  the  essential  intent 
of  the  college,  but  to  miss  the  pre-eminent  function 
of  education. 

Whatever  the  changes  that  have  and  must  con- 
tinue to  come  in  subject  and  method,  the  end  for 
which  our  fathers  planned  and  toiled  in  founding 
Harvard  College  and  those  which  followed  should 
be  conserved  in  the  East  and  West,  for  the  sake 
of  the  preservation  of  the  nation  and  holding  it 
to  its  mission  in  the  life  of  the  world.  Three 
things  were  written  large  in  the  history  and  gov- 
ernment of  these  early  New  England  colleges : 
"  piety,"  "  morality,"  and  "  learning,"  all  of  them 
essential  for  "  the  public  weal." 

The  status  and  future  of  the  Western  college 
must  be  tested  by  those  purposes  for  which  it  was 
established  and  developed  in  England  and  America. 

The  maintenance  of  the  college  in  the  West  de- 
pends very  largely  upon  conformity  to  what  it 
has  been  in  the  East,  and  upon  the  realization  of 
the  exalted  aim  which  called  it  into  existence,  and 
which  has  been  its  genius  in  years  gone  by. 

For  this  reason  it  is  exceedingly  important  that 


136  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

with  self-respect  it  should  stand  independently 
upon  its  own  feet,  and  refuse  to  be  driven  from  its 
noble  purpose  by  those  who  are  interested,  for 
good  and  sufficient  reasons,  in  other  types  of  edu- 
cational foundations. 

The  attempt  to  modify  its  curriculum,  to  take 
away  from  it  one  or  two  years  of  the  time  which 
it  must  have  for  perfecting  its  work,  is  a  mark  of 
subserviency  which  is  unworthy  of  its  past  history 
and  its  future  possibilities. 

The  questions  growing  out  of  the  length  of 
time  it  takes  a  student  to  prepare  himself  for  his 
life  work,  the  forcing  upon  it  of  what  is  called  the 
*'  practical  side  of  education,"  and  the  demand  for 
shortening  preparation,  especially  when  all  this  is 
done  at  the  expense  of  the  college,  are  fraught 
with  gravest  danger  and  serious  consequences,  not 
only  to  the  college  but  to  the  best  life  of  the 
nation. 

A  comparatively  few  years  ago  in  the  West  the 
opinion  was  widely  promulgated  that  the  day  of 
the  college  was  past ;  that  it  was  to  be  crushed 
between  the  secondary  school  and  the  university; 
that  it  was  a  sort  of  unnecessary  luxury  and  that 
the  day  was  not  far  distant  when  it  must  close  its 
doors,  discharge  its  faculties,  and  say  to  its  eager 
young  men  and  women :  "  There  is  nothing  further 
that  we  can  do  for  you,  our  mission  is  ended." 
That  issue  has  been  successfully  met,  quietly,  ear- 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST     137 

nestly,  and  deliberately.  The  men  who  agitated 
this  conception  have  either  disappeared  or  for  the 
most  part  have  passed  into  silence,  while  the  lead- 
ers of  the  college  movement  are  standing  with  inde- 
pendence and  self-respect,  unmoved,  courageous, 
and  hopeful,  declaring  that  the  college  is  just 
entering  on  its  largest  mission  and  its  most  im- 
portant work. 

The  same  independence,  far-sightedness,  and 
self-respect  should  come  into  play  in  meeting  the 
new  form  of  attack  upon  its  integrity,  in  the 
present  advocacy  of  the  so-called  "  Junior  Col- 
lege." This  is  another  demand  that  it  should  take 
a  secondary  place  in  the  educational  movement, 
step  aside  from  its  high  office,  and  abrogate  its 
unsurpassed  opportunity  for  service.  To  yield  to 
this  new  attack  is  but  a  step  in  the  path  which 
leads  ultimately  to  its  obliteration,  and  thus  to  lose 
sight  of  the  most  important  element  in  the  educa- 
tional movement  in  America. 

No  intelligent  person  questions  the  place  that 
professional  and  technical  education  has  taken  and 
must  assume  in  the  development  of  the  nation.  We 
must  not  forget  also  that  there  is  enormous  danger 
in  the  tendency  which  loses  sight  of  what  the  Eng- 
lish college  conserved  by  its  study  of  the  humani- 
ties, which,  as  Lord  Bryce  says  in  the  address  to 
which  reference  has  been  made,  "  appealed  thor- 
oughly to  the  finer  instincts  and  affections."    It  is 


138  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

the  old  problem  of  the  proper  adjustment  in  the 
development  of  the  individual  between  what  is 
physical  and  that  which  is  spiritual.  It  raises  the 
question  as  to  whether  a  nation  given  over  to  love 
of  the  material  side  of  life,  or,  if  you  please,  of 
mere  science,  is  to  find  its  true  destiny.  Is  love 
of  learning  for  its  own  sake,  of  literature,  of 
poetry,  of  art,  of  philosophy,  of  ethics,  and,  most 
of  all,  of  religion  to  sink  into  the  background  and 
lose  its  place  of  commanding  pre-eminence? 

In  meeting  this  issue,  as  is  being  done  in  the 
West  at  the  present  time,  on  the  whole  with  dis- 
tinct success,  it  is  recognized  that  four  years  in 
college  is  not  necessary  so  much  for  certain  courses 
of  study  as  it  is  essential  for  giving  opportunity 
for  that  intellectual  and  moral  growth  which  is 
absolutely  requisite  in  the  production  of  trained 
men  and  women.  The  law  of  growth  as  established 
by  the  Creator  bears  even  more  fully  upon  the 
development  of  a  human  soul  than  it  does  upon  the 
production  of  crops  from  the  soil  or  animals  on 
the  face  of  the  earth.  Forced  growth  in  the  evo- 
lution of  character  is  suicidal. 

In  discussing  the  present  status  and  probable 
future  of  the  college  in  the  West,  one  must  con- 
sider it  in  the  light  of  what  it  has  been  in  the  past, 
and  whether  it  can  and  will  maintain  its  efficiency, 
its  strength,  and  its  peculiar  character.  Its 
value  and  its  stability  are  conditioned  upon  con- 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST     139 

serving  its  primary  mission  of  producing  trained 
men  for  leadership. 

One  answer  to  this  inquiry  can  be  found  in  ex- 
amining the  condition  of  its  physical  and  financial 
standing.  Without  income  and  equipment  it  can- 
not possibly  do  its  work  or  fulfill  its  high  preroga- 
tive. Reference  will  be  made  to  only  a  few  typical 
Western  colleges,  as  illustrating  the  position  taken 
in  this  paper. 

It  is  not  maintained  that  all  the  colleges  of  the 
West  are  fitted  for  the  work  to  which  they  are 
called.  Many  of  them  ought  never  to  have  been 
instituted,  as  is  true  of  other  educational  estab- 
lishments. Others  have  so  far  departed  from  that 
to  which  they  were  called  that  they  cannot  recover, 
and  should  drop  out  of  existence.  Some  have  been 
founded  on  too  narrow  a  basis  to  be  of  any  distinct 
value. 

If,  however,  it  can  be  shown  that  there  are  cer- 
tain colleges  holding  vantage  ground  of  strategic 
importance  which  are  doing  effective  work  and 
carrying  out  the  ends  for  which  they  were  founded, 
it  will  establish  the  proposition  that  these  and 
others  like  them  should  be  maintained  at  all  haz- 
ards. Moreover,  there  is  not  time  to  do  more  than 
refer  to  this  limited  number  of  institutions.  What 
is  maintained  is  that  there  are  colleges  in  the  West 
that  rank  with  the  best  in  the  country,  which  are 
holding  true  to  the  traditions  of  the  past  and  ful- 


140  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

filling  the  intent  of  these  well-differentiated  and 
independent  institutions  of  higher  learning.  Ex- 
amination will  be  made  of  seven  only,  which  hold 
widely  separated  geographical  positions,  and  which 
are  admirably  and  wisely  located  so  as  to  be  centers 
of  large  and  commanding  influence. 

The  first  is  Beloit  College  in  Wisconsin,  founded 
for  the  purpose  of  carrying  out  the  conceptions 
which  established  New  England  institutions.  It 
possesses  endowment  funds  of  $1,400,000  and 
buildings  and  equipment  which  have  cost  in  the 
vicinity  of  $520,000.  These  have  steadily  in- 
creased during  the  past  twenty  or  more  years,  and 
it  has  a  group  of  375  students,  with  an  able  and 
well-trained  faculty.  Its  standards  are  such  that 
colleges  of  its  own  type  in  the  East  accept  its 
examinations.  It  has  fulfilled  in  a  marked  degree 
the  intellectual,  moral,  and  religious  purpose  for 
which  it  was  established  in  that  section  of  the 
country. 

The  second  is  Carleton  College  in  Minnesota, 
founded  by  the  early  settlers  with  a  distinctly  re- 
ligious as  well  as  educational  motive.  It  has  passed 
through  years  of  struggle  and  heroic  devotion.  At 
present  it  occupies  a  place  of  influence  in  its  im- 
portant location.  It  had  last  year  456  under- 
graduate students,  and  its  endowments  have  in- 
creased in  the  last  seventeen  years  from  $250,000 
to  a  little  over  $1,000,000.    Its  grounds,  buildings, 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST     141 

and  equipments  have  a  value  of  $565,000.  Every 
college  and  university  of  the  East  is  very  glad  to 
welcome  as  undergraduate  or  graduate  student 
those  who  have  passed  the  examinations  at  this  in- 
stitution. Its  influence  locally  and  nationally  is 
already  making  itself  felt  in  ways  of  which  its 
founders  would  approve. 

The  third  is  Colorado  College,  located  in  the 
heart  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  region,  in  a  city  pre- 
eminently well  fitted  to  be  a  college  town.  It  also 
was  founded  by  the  early  pioneers  for  a  very  dis- 
tinctively ethical  and  religious  purpose.  After 
years  of  severe  effort  and  many  discouragements, 
having  made  its  standards  the  same  as  those  of  the 
leading  institutions  of  New  England,  it  began  its 
advance  movement.  It  has  an  endowment  in  care- 
fully invested  funds  of  $1,042,000,  and  has  spent 
$968,000  upon  buildings,  equipment,  and  its  li- 
brary of  87,000  volumes.  It  has  a  faculty  which 
will  compare  favorably  in  teaching  power  and  in- 
tellectual strength  with  the  faculties  of  other  lead- 
ing colleges  of  the  country.  Its  graduates  are 
received  into  the  professional  schools  and  universi- 
ties of  the  country.  Its  students  to-day  number 
708. 

The  fourth  typical  institution  is  located  in  the 
center  of  Iowa:  Grinnell  College.  It,  too,  was 
founded  by  men  of  high  character  and  rare  devo- 
tion.     It  has  held  with  great  tenacity  to  high 


14a  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

ideals  in  its  undergraduate  work,  and  it  has  a 
faculty  of  unusual  ability,  which  numbers  among 
its  members  men  of  scholarship,  whose  publica- 
tions are  known  throughout  the  scientific  and  edu- 
cational world.  It  possesses  an  endowment  of 
$1,305,000,  and  an  investment  in  buildings,  equip- 
ment, and  library  of  $764,000.  Its  students  num- 
ber 663,  and  its  educational  standards  are  as  high 
as  those  of  any  of  the  other  colleges  to  which 
reference  has  been  made. 

The  fifth  foundation  is  situated  in  the  state  of 
Ohio:  Oberlin  College.  Few  institutions  in  the 
world  have  had  such  a  record  of  loyalty  to  religion 
and  intellectual  standards  as  has  this  foundation. 
It,  too,  was  established  by  thoughtful  men  pos- 
sessed of  a  spirit  of  unusual  self-sacrifice.  Its 
regular  undergraduate  students  number  something 
over  1,000.  It  possesses  an  endowment,  includ- 
ing its  last  gift,  of  over  $3,000,000,  and  has 
an  investment  in  equipment  and  buildings  of 
$1,409,000. 

The  sixth  is  in  California :  Pomona  College.  Its 
early  history  is  largely  a  repetition  of  what  has 
already  been  said  in  regard  to  the  others  men- 
tioned. Its  standards  are  also  recognized  by  the 
older  institutions  of  the  East,  and  it  holds  a  place 
of  strategic  importance  in  its  large  and  important 
commonwealth.  Its  students  last  year  numbered 
515,  and  its  endowment  at  the  present  time  is  a 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST     143 

little  over  $1,000,000.  It  has  an  investment  in 
equipment  and  buildings  of  $467,000. 

The  last  institution  is  in  the  state  of  Washing- 
ton: Whitman  College.  It  holds  an  important 
situation  in  the  new  Northwest.  Its  beginnings 
were  practically  the  same  as  those  of  the  other 
foundations  which  have  been  enumerated.  Its 
ideals,  aims,  and  purpose  are  thoGe  distinctly  of 
the  historical  colleges  of  the  country.  Its  faculty 
has  the  same  rare  devotion,  and  it,  too,  holds  a 
position  with  high  standards  corresponding  to 
those  of  such  colleges  as  Allegheny,  WiUiams,  and 
Amherst.  It  had  last  year  an  endowment  of 
$663,000,  an  investment  in  buildings  and  equip- 
ment of  over  $300,000,  and  an  enroUment  of  450 
students. 

Here  are  seven  educational  organizations  that 
have  stood  loyally  to  the  historic  standards,  ideals, 
and  purposes  of  the  college.  They  have  refused  to 
yield  to  the  demands  that  have  been  made  and  are 
still  being  made  for  a  modification  of  courses  and  of 
the  time  occupied  in  the  training  of  their  students. 
They  hold  to  the  four  years  necessary  for  gradua- 
tion. There  are  in  them  4,057  students.  Their 
invested  funds,  the  income  of  which  is  used  for 
current  expenses,  amount  to  $9,353,000,  and  the 
total  cost  of  their  buildings  and  equipments  has 
been  $5,012,000,  making  a  gross  valuation  of  en- 
dowments and  equipments  of  $14,365,000.     They 


144j  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

possess  faculties  that  in  scholarship  and  academic 
attainments  will  rank  with  those  of  such  institu- 
tions as  Williams,  Amherst,  and  Bowdoin.  Five 
of  them  are  on  the  list  of  accepted  institutions  of 
"  The  Carnegie  Foundation  for  the  Advancement 
of  Teaching."  All  have  been  recognized  by  the 
"  General  Education  Board."  Their  graduates 
have  won  high  distinction  in  the  leading  schools  of 
medicine,  law,  journalism,  theology,  and  science. 
Many  of  them  are  on  the  faculties  of  such  institu- 
tions as  Harvard,  Yale,  Columbia,  Johns  Hopkins, 
and  Leland  Stanford  Jr.  Universities.  Others 
have  become  leaders  at  the  bar,  in  the  pulpit,  in 
medicine  and  surgery.  An  unusually  large  num- 
ber are  statesmen  of  the  highest  order,  and  no 
group  of  colleges  in  the  world  has  sent  as  many 
in  proportion  to  their  graduates  into  foreign  ser- 
vice under  missionary  boards,  as  physicians,  teach- 
ers, clergymen,  and  administrative  officers.  Their 
influence  in  the  life  of  the  world  and  of  our  own 
nation  is  of  inestimable  value.  They  have  all  now 
reached  a  point  in  their  history  where  it  is  impos- 
sible to  think  of  their  disintegration  or  of  their 
going  backwards,  either  in  their  material  pros- 
perity or  in  their  academic  standing.  It  may  well 
be  doubted  whether  there  are  seven  colleges  in  the 
world  that  are  to-day  doing  as  much  for  the  moral, 
religious,  and  intellectual  leadership  as  are  those  to 
which  reference  has  been  made.     If  one  desires  to 


THE  COLLEGE  IN  THE  WEST     145 

know  the  status  and  future  of  the  college  in  the 
West,  he  has  but  to  visit  and  critically  study  the 
present  work  of  these  seven  typical  colleges,  to 
come  in  contact  with  their  faculties  and  students, 
to  examine  their  equipments,  and,  above  all,  to 
trace  the  history  of  their  graduates  in  the  life  of 
the  nation  and  of  the  world. 

Without  doubt  all  of  these  institutions  could  use 
to  great  advantage  larger  endowments  and  equip- 
ments and  increased  faculties.  Practically  every 
one  of  them  is  suffering  from  the  stress  and  strain 
of  restricted  income  and  there  is  no  institution  in 
America  which  could  be  aided  to  greater  advantage 
than  these  colleges  and  those  that  are  like  them, 
if  one  cares  for  the  moral,  religious,  and  intellect- 
ual standards  of  the  nation. 

In  spite  of  these  limitations,  they  are  render- 
ing a  service  of  incomparable  value  and  are  holding 
to  those  conceptions  and  ideals  which  have  made 
the  EngHsh  college  a  power  in  the  history  of 
the  British  Empire,  and  the  American  college  a 
force  in  the  creation  of  the  best  leadership  in  the 
country. 

Their  past  history,  however,  is  not  comparable 
with  the  possibilities  of  their  future  service.  The 
almost  irresistible  movement  towards  the  domina- 
tion of  material  things,  the  power  of  wealth,  the 
struggle  for  preferment,  are  tending  in  many  ways 
towards  lowering  of  ethical  standards,  and  against 


146  WILLIAM  F.  SLOCUM 

that  which  Lord  Bryce  has  said  are  the  essential 
qualities  in  the  making  of  a  nation. 

Without  such  influence  as  they  exert  political 
and  moral  decline  will  come  to  this  people  as  it  has 
to  others.  The  holding  of  the  nation  to  the  "  finer 
instincts  and  affections  "  which  make  for  strength 
of  character  carries  with  it  the  glory  and  sanctity 
of  a  commonwealth. 

It  still  holds  true  that  the  great  business  of  the 
college  is  to  fit  its  students  to  be  serviceable  in 
the  life  of  the  world,  and  so  to  "  serve  their  fel- 
low-men." Its  effort  must  ever  be  to  discover 
truth  by  scholarship,  and  train  men  for  service. 
This  is  its  birthright,  and  this  is  also  the  noblest 
of  all  educational  prerogatives.  The  university 
and  the  technical  school  have  a  mission  of  far- 
reaching  significance.  There  is  also  a  well-defined 
and  differentiated  mission  for  the  college,  which,  if 
lost  sight  of,  destroys  its  raison  d'etre. 

No  college  to-day  has  fully  risen  to  the  impor- 
tance or  the  privilege  of  its  opportunity.  It  needs 
to  guard  itself  with  great  care  in  order  that  it 
may  realize  its  errand  to  humanity,  but  that  it  is 
rendering  a  service  of  incomparable  and  inestimable 
value  there  can  be  no  doubt. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    THE    COL- 
LEGE AS  DISTINCT  FROM  THE 
HIGH    SCHOOL,    THE    PRO- 
FESSIONAL SCHOOL,  AND 
THE  UNIVERSITY 

PRESIDENT  ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

I  MUST  begin  this  paper  by  asking  a  question — 
a  question  addressed  to  the  audience.  The  answer 
is  a  matter  of  vital  concern  to  me.  I  wish  to  ask 
you  whether  from  one  statement  which  I  shall  give 
another  logically  follows.  If  we  say  that  every- 
thing that  could  be  said  about  the  American  col- 
lege has  been  said,  does  it  follow  that  there  is  noth- 
ing more  to  say?  My  own  opinion  is  that  it  does 
not  follow  at  all  and  I  appeal  to  the  science  of  logic 
for  justification.  That  science  tells  us  that  what- 
ever has  been  said  in  one  way  can  be  said  again  in 
another,  and  that  perhaps  just  such  translation 
into  other  forms  is  the  chief  task  of  what  we  call 
thinking.  And  especially  logic  tells  us  that  what- 
ever has  been  said  in  affirmative  terms  may  often, 
to  great  advantage,  be  expressed  in  negative  terms. 

If  it  is  truly  said  that  "  John  is  in  Boston,"  it 
is  also  safe  to  remark  that  "  John  is  not  in  New 

147 


148       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

York,"  and  this  latter  statement  may  be  of  much 
greater  importance  to  some  of  John's  friends. 
There  is,  of  course,  a  difficulty,  namely  that  it  is 
hard  to  exhaust  the  content  of  the  negative  judg- 
ment. When  once  you  start  on  this  process  the 
trouble  is  not  to  find  something  to  say  but  to  tell 
where  to  stop  in  the  illimitable  expanse  which  lies 
before  you.  It  is  well  enough  to  say  that  John  is 
not  in  New  York,  but  if  you  proceed  to  tell  all 
the  places  in  which  John  is  not,  considerable  time 
must  be  allowed  for  the  operation.  While,  there- 
fore, I  insist  that  this  logical  principle  be  accepted 
in  order  that  I  may  have  a  subject  to  talk  about, 
I  beg  the  audience  not  to  be  terrified  by  its  pos- 
sibilities. For  general  purposes,  logical  principles 
must  be  applied  sparingly  and  with  discretion.  It 
is  quite  possible  to  have  too  much  of  a  good 
thing. 

But  the  one  point  on  which  I  do  insist  is  that  in 
spite  of  all  the  wisdom  of  these  ten  wise  men  who 
have  preceded  me  there  is  still  something  left  to 
consider.  They  have  told  you  what  the  college  is. 
I  may  try  to  tell  you  what  it  is  not.  They  have 
told  you  what  the  college  has,  what  it  does,  what 
it  has  accomplished,  what  it  dreams,  what  it  will 
be  in  the  days  to  come.  Somewhere  within  the  field 
of  what  it  has  not,  what  it  does  not  do,  what  it  has 
not  done,  what  it  does  not  dream,  what  it  will  not 
be — somewhere   within   this   field,   for   which   one 


THE  FUNCIION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    149 

might  claim  infinite  time,  there  lies  the  subject  of 
this  paper. 

If,  then,  we  were  with  any  fullness  to  define  the 
function  of  the  college  in  negative  terms  it  would 
be  necessary  to  show  and  to  explain  that  the  col- 
lege is  not  a  high  school,  not  a  professional  school, 
not  a  university,  nor  any  part  thereof.  But  every- 
one knows  that  there  are  many  kinds  of  high 
school,  many  types  of  professional  school,  many 
separate  schools  within  a  university.  If  we  should 
discuss  each  one  of  these  "  separatim  et  seriatim," 
showing  that  the  college  is  not  any  one  of  them,  is 
different  from  them  all,  I  fear  that  the  consequence 
for  you  would  be  much  weariness  of  the  flesh  and 
great  vexation  of  the  spirit.  But  again  the  kindly 
science  of  logic  will  hurry  to  our  rescue.  That 
science  has  another  valuable  principle,  viz.,  that 
there  is  no  sense  in  denying  a  statement  unless 
someone  has  asserted  it.  What  assertions,  then, 
of  the  identity  of  the  college  with  other  institu- 
tions are  just  now  being  made  with  sufficient  in- 
sistence to  demand  our  attention.?  There  are 
teachers  who  seem  to  find  little  difference  between 
the  college  and  the  high  school,  but  their  lack  of 
perception  is  not  very  important.  We  are  just 
emerging  from  a  period  in  which  the  college  has 
been  regarded  as  a  part  of  the  university  and  has 
been  identified  with  the  whole  in  essential  attitud** 
and   spirit.      But  the   day  of  that   confusion  is 


160        ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN  ____ 

rapidly  closing.  The  one  confusion  which  does  to- 
day threaten  our  understanding  of  the  function  of 
the  college  is  that  which  identifies  it  with  the  pro- 
fessional school,  which  declares  that  there  is  no 
genuine  education  which  is  not  really  professional, 
which  characterizes  the  belief  in  a  "  liberal  educa- 
tion," separate  from  and  independent  of  vocational 
and  professional  study,  as  an  idle  creation  of  dream 
and  fancy.  In  these  pragmatic  days  such  a  con- 
fusion as  this  is  likely  to  spread  far  and  wide.  It 
is  not  the  only  instance  of  pragmatic  thinking 
which  just  now  threatens  the  clarity  of  our  edu- 
cational policy,  but  it  is  an  especially  dangerous 
one  because  it  strikes  at  the  very  roots  of  all  our 
liberal  teaching.  Amid  these  days  of  celebration 
and  study  of  the  American  liberal  college,  I  should 
like  to  smite  as  hard  as  I  can  hit  at  this  heresy 
which  denies  the  very  belief  on  which  that  college 
is  built. 

The  heresy  is  hard  to  meet  just  now  because  in 
a  sense  it  catches  us  off  our  balance.  Under  the 
influence  of  the  university  ideal  the  colleges  had 
been  saying  to  their  students,  "  Study  anything 
you  like ;  all  knowledge  is  good ;  in  fact,  all  knowl- 
edge is  equally  good;  make  your  choice,  follow 
your  bent ;  if  only  you  keep  going  in  any  direction 
a  liberal  education  is  assured."  But  as  against 
this,  we  are  seeing  more  and  more  clearly  every 
day  that  the  content  of  a  liberal  education  is  not 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    151 

thus  indefinite  and  indeterminate,  that  there  is  an 
intellectual  culture  which  one  must  master  if  he  is 
to  travel  the  way  of  liberal  education.  And  in  our 
enthusiasm  we  have  been  crying:  "Back  to  the 
good  old  college  of  earlier  days,  away  with  the 
extravagances  of  election  and  specialization,  let  us 
return  again  to  the  fathers,  to  the  requirements 
which  they  established,  to  the  college  which  they 
founded."  And  here  it  is  that  the  subtle  and  dan- 
gerous heresy  finds  its  opportunity.  "  Do  you 
wish  definite  and  coherent  requirements.'*  "  it  asks. 
"  Very  well,  you  will  find  them  in  the  professional 
school."  And  if  we  protest  that  these  are  not  the 
requirements  that  we  had  in  mind,  that  they  are  not 
liberal  but  technical,  then  there  descends  upon  us 
a  crushing  and  bewildering  argument.  "  You  wish 
to  return  to  the  spirit  and  practice  of  the  old 
colonial  college,"  it  says ;  "  very  well,  do  so,  but 
first  recognize  that  the  college  which  you  imitate 
was  itself  a  professional  school.  The  colonial  fore- 
fathers were  not  wasting  idle  dreams  on  this  airy 
nothing  which  you  call  *  liberal  training.'  They 
needed  ministers  for  their  churches  and  so  they 
founded  colleges  to  train  those  ministers.  The 
colleges  which  they  established  were  in  essential 
purpose  schools  of  divinity,  schools  to  train  young 
men  for  the  profession  of  the  ministry.  They 
were  devised  for  a  special  purpose  and  the  fore- 
fathers were  shrewd  enough  to  see  to  it  that  that 


152        ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

purpose  was  realized."  And  from  this  assertion 
as  its  premise,  the  argument  proceeds  to  its  con- 
clusion. 

"  The  old  college  was  professional  in  spirit ;  then 
so  too  should  we  be  who  imitate  it  in  spirit.  But 
the  old  college  intended  to  train  for  only  one  of 
the  professions.  To  that  end  all  its  courses  of 
study,  all  its  methods  of  teaching,  were  adapted. 
It  will  never  do  to  give  the  same  courses  of  study, 
the  same  teaching,  to  the  boys  who  are  planning 
for  other  professions.  Loyalty  to  the  old  college 
demands  that  for  each  profession  its  own  special 
system  of  preparation  be  devised;  we  in  our  day 
must  do  for  lawyers,  engineers,  physicians,  archi- 
tects, for  each  of  these  what  the  fathers  in  their 
day  did  for  the  students  of  divinity."  So  by  the 
argument  the  college  becomes  simply  a  collection 
of  professional  schools  ;  liberal  education  as  a  thing 
apart  has  disappeared.  And  we  arrive  at  a  new 
definition  of  the  American  liberal  college, — it  is  an 
institution  which  some  people  had  mistakenly  be- 
lieved to  exist. 

In  considering  the  effect  of  such  an  argument  as 
this  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  account  the  second- 
ary result  as  well  as  the  primary.  The  first  effect, 
as  in  the  case  of  all  honest  conflicts  with  convincing 
arguments,  is  that  you  find  yourself  knocked  down. 
The  second  stage  of  the  experience,  however,  re- 
veals two  facts:  (1)  that  you  can  get  up  again. 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    153 

and  (2)  that  you  are  not  hurt,  indeed  that  you  are 
rather  exhilarated  by  what  has  happened.  This 
secondary  stage  is  proof  positive  that  you  have 
not  been  hit  by  anything  solid.  At  this  time,  it 
is  in  order  to  inquire  what  it  was  which,  at  the 
moment  of  impact,  gave  such  an  impression  of 
solidity. 

The  most  interesting  feature  of  the  argument  is 
that  the  premise  on  which  it  depends  is  not  true. 
The  premise  asserts  that,  in  the  sense  in  which  we 
now  use  the  term,  the  colonial  college  was  a  pro- 
fessional school.  But  it  was  not,  nor  was  it  in- 
tended to  be.  The  supposed  evidence  for  the  asser- 
tion is  simply  a  confusion  as  to  the  meaning  of 
another  statement  which  is  true.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  one  of  the  primary  motives  of  the  founders 
of  the  early  colleges  was  to  provide  for  the  educa- 
tion of  the  clergy.  But  the  assertion  under  dis- 
cussion is  not  identical  with  this,  nor  does  it  follow 
from  it.  And  apart  from  questions  of  inference, 
the  plain  facts  of  record  concerning  the  purpose  of 
the  founders  forbid  the  suggested  interpretation  of 
their  intention.  He  who  would  hold  to  this  inter- 
pretation must  maintain  two  assertions  concerning 
our  colonial  forefathers:  (1)  that  they  did  not 
mean  what  they  said,  and  (2)  that  they  did  not  get 
what  they  paid  for.  My  impression  is  that  the 
antecedent  probability  is  in  both  cases  strongly 
against  my  opponent. 


154       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

With  regard  to  the  purpose  which  the  colleges 
were  intended  to  further,  there  are  clear  expres- 
sions in  the  charters  under  which  they  were  estab- 
lished. The  assertion  under  discussion  is  that  these 
colleges  were  established  to  give  professional  train- 
ing to  ministerial  students.  The  charter  of  Har- 
vard College,  granted  in  1650,  defines  the  aim  as 
*'  for  the  advancement  of  all  good  literature,  arts, 
and  sciences."  The  new  articles  of  1780,  re- 
viewing the  achievements  of  the  college,  say 
"  in  which  University  many  persons  of  great 
eminence  have,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  been 
initiated  in  those  arts  and  sciences  which  qualified 
them  for  public  employments  both  in  Church 
and  State.'* 

The  charter  of  Yale  University,  the  Collegiate 
School  of  Connecticut,  describes  it  as  a  school 
"  wherein  youth  may  be  instructed  in  the  arts  and 
sciences,  who  through  the  blessing  of  Almighty 
God  may  be  fitted  for  Public  employment  both  in 
Church  and  Civil  State."  The  charter  of  the 
Academy  and  Charitable  School  in  the  Province  of 
Pennsylvania  approves  the  project,  "  hoping  that 
this  academy  may  prove  a  nursery  of  wisdom  and 
virtue,  and  that  it  will  produce  men  of  dispositions 
and  capacities  beneficial  to  mankind  in  the  various 
occupations  of  life."  The  charter  of  Kings  Col- 
lege in  New  York  provides  for  the  instruction  and 
education  of  youth  in  the  learned  languages  and  in 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    155 

the  liberal  arts  and  sciences.     The  announcement 
reads  in  part  as  follows : 

"  A  serious,  virtuous,  and  industrious  Course  of  Life 
being  first  provided  for,  it  is  further  the  Design  of  this 
College,  to  instruct  and  perfect  the  Youth  in  the 
Learned  Languages,  and  in  the  Arts  of  Reasoning  ex- 
actly, of  Writing  correctly  and  Speaking  eloquently; 
And  in  the  Arts  of  Numbering  and  Measuring,  of  Sur- 
veying and  Navigation,  of  Geography  and  History,  of 
Husbandry,  Commerce,  and  Government;  and  in  the 
Knowledge  of  all  Nature  in  the  Heavens  above  us,  and 
in  the  Air,  Water,  and  Earth  around  us,  and  the  vari- 
ous Kinds  of  Meteors,  Stones,  Mines,  and  Minerals, 
Plants  and  Animals,  and  of  every  Thing  useful  for 
the  Comfort,  the  Convenience,  the  Elegance  of  Life, 
in  the  chief  Manufactures  relating  to  any  of  these 
things;  And  finally,  to  lead  them  from  the  Study  of 
Nature,  to  the  Knowledge  of  themselves,  and  of  the 
God  of  Nature,  and  their  Duty  to  Him,  themselves, 
and  one  another;  and  every  Thing  that  can  contribute 
to  their  true  Happiness,  both  here  and  hereafter." 

Surely  this  is   a  strange  course  of  study  for  a 
divinity  school  1 

One  of  the  most  illuminating  cases  is  that  of 
Brown  University.  The  expressed  intention  of  the 
founders  of  Brown  University  was  "  to  establish  a 
seminary  of  polite  literature  subject  to  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  Baptists,"  and  beyond  question  they 


156        ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

were  planning  for  the  education  of  their  own  can- 
didates for  the  ministry.  But  does  this  mean  that 
they  planned  to  give  professional  theological  train- 
ing in  the  college?  If  so,  why  is  it  specified  that 
youth  of  all  religious  denominations  shall  be  ac- 
cepted? Was  it  intended  that  Congregationalists 
and  Episcopalians  should  become  Baptist  minis- 
ters? And  why  is  it  so  definitely  stated  that  "  the 
Sectarian  differences  of  opinions  shall  not  make  any 
Part  of  the  Public  and  Classical  Instruction  "?  Is 
it  customary  in  a  divinity  school  to  forbid  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  tenets  of  the  sect  by  which  the  school 
is  established?  There  was  no  such  restriction 
when  the  first  divinity  school  was  established  at 
Andover  in  1807,  for  then  the  project  was  de- 
layed until  the  founders  could  agree  what  creed 
should  be  taught,  and  until  it  had  been  voted  that 
each  professor  should  assent  to  the  creed  which  the 
Hoplcinsians  had  prepared.  Is  there  not  a  different 
motive  here  from  that  expressed  in  the  charter  of 
Brown  which  says,  "  Into  this  Liberal  and  Catholic 
Institution  shall  never  be  admitted  any  Religious 
Tests  but  on  the  Contrary  all  the  Members  hereof 
shall  for  ever  enjoy  full  free  Absolute  and  unin- 
terrupted Liberty  of  Conscience"?  In  1770  the 
'  trustees  of  the  new  college  in  Rhode  Island  voted 
**  that  the  children  of  Jews  may  be  admitted  to  the 
institution  and  Intlrely  enjoy  the  freedom  of  their 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    157 

own  religion  without  any  constraint  or  imposition 
whatever."  Was  it  in  order  that  they  might  be 
prepared  for  the  priesthood  of  their  own  church,  or 
was  it  in  the  hope  that  the  free  and  unhampered 
dialectic  of  their  own  Jewish  faith  might  bring 
them  eventually  into  the  Baptist  pulpit? 

I  have  given  only  a  few  quotations  from  the 
charters  and  early  statutes,  but  on  these  we  may 
safely  rest  the  case  as  to  the  purpose  of  the 
founders  of  the  colonial  colleges.  Some  people  are 
saying  to-day  that  the  intention  was  to  give  tech- 
nical training  for  the  ministry.  The  charters  say 
that  the  colleges  were  established  to  give  teaching 
in  literature,  the  arts,  and  sciences,  with  the  ex- 
pectation that  this  teaching  would  be  of  value  both 
in  church  and  state,  in  all  the  various  occupations 
into  which  young  men  might  go.  For  my  own 
part,  the  evidence  of  the  charters  is  the  more  con- 
vincing. I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  colonial 
forefathers  knew  what  they  meant  and  meant  what 
they  said. 

But  now  for  the  test  of  the  work  done.  What- 
ever they  said,  did  the  colleges  actually  train  men 
for  the  ministry  in  the  sense  in  which  professional 
schools  are  now  preparing  them  for  separate  occu- 
pations? In  his  book  on  Educational  Reform, 
President  Eliot  records  that  in  the  ten  years  from 
1761  to  1770  the  percentage  of  ministers  among 
the  graduates  of  Harvard  College  was  twenty-nine. 


158       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

among  those  of  Yale  thirty-two,  and  among  those 
of  Princeton  forty-five.  In  the  first  thirty-nine 
classes  graduated  from  Brown  only  twenty-five  per 
cent,  of  the  members  entered  the  ministry.  Now 
what  shall  we  say  of  the  seventy-one  per  cent,  at 
Harvard,  the  sixty-eight  per  cent,  at  Yale,  the 
fifty-five  per  cent,  at  Princeton,  and  the  seventy-five 
per  cent,  at  Brown.-*  These  men  were  planning  to 
practice  law,  medicine,  teaching,  business.  Why  did 
they  go  to  a  divinity  school?  Did  they  think  that 
a  man  who  is  ready  for  the  ministry  is  ready  for 
anything.?  The  statement  is  perhaps  true,  but 
hardly  relevant.  I  venture  to  suggest  that  their 
real  opinion  was  that  expressed  in  the  charters  we 
have  quoted,  viz. :  that  the  education  which  the  col- 
lege gave  was  regarded  as  of  value  to  a  man  what- 
ever the  profession  into  which  he  might  go.  If  it 
be  urged  that  there  were  no  other  schools  to  which 
they  could  go,  I  should  reply  that  in  that  case,  if 
they  had  wanted  something  else,  they  would  have 
made  protest  long  and  loud,  and  would  have  de- 
manded changes  in  the  old  colleges  or  the  estab- 
lishment of  new  ones.  But  a  record  of  the  attitude 
of  the  lay  graduates  of  our  colleges  is  not  one  of 
fault-finding  and  protest.  Rather  have  they  shown 
unswerving  loyalty  and  gratitude,  and  because  of 
their  faith  in  the  college  and  its  teaching,  they 
have  poured  out  the  wealth  which  has  enlarged  the 
college  to  proportions  of  which  its  founders  never 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    159 

dreamed.  Benefactors  and  graduates  alike  have 
believed  in  non-professional  education,  and  have 
believed  they  were  receiving  it.  He  who  says  that 
they  have  paid  for  professional  education  says 
that  they  have  paid  for  what  they  thought  they 
were  not  getting.  Knowing  them  as  I  do,  I  find  the 
statement  hard  to  accept. 

The  point  just  made  presents  itself  in  another 
form  when  viewed  in  relation  to  present  condi- 
tions. To  the  old  college  there  went  students  plan- 
ning to  enter  all  the  professions,  and  they  found 
there  the  education  which  they  sought.  Of  what 
professional  school  is  it  true  to-day  that  candidates 
for  the  other  professions  go  to  it  for  training.'' 
Are  there  many  law  students  in  the  medical  schools, 
many  engineering  students  in  the  divinity  schools, 
many  architects  in  the  schools  of  music?  Would 
it  not  be  a  new  type  of  engineering  school  which 
should  attract  forty-five,  fifty-five,  seventy,  or 
seventy-five  per  cent,  of  students  going  into  other 
professions  ?  I  think  that  if  we  found  an  engineer- 
ing school  of  that  type  we  should  begin  to  give  it 
ferent  function  from  the  one  we  had  assigned  it, 
another  name,  should  recognize  it  as  having  a  dif- 
should  take  away  from  it  the  name  *'  professional  " 
and  call  it  "  liberal,"  a  school  in  which  are  to  be 
found  studies  and  teaching  of  value  to  a  man  what- 
ever his  profession  may  be.  To  call  such  a  school 
technical  or  professional  is  simply  to  twist  terms 


160       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

out  of  all  resemblance  to  their  ordinary  meanings. 
It  indicates  a  confusion  of  thought  which  demands 
more  careful  analysis  of  the  argument  than  we  have 
yet  given.  It  will  be  worth  while  to  examine  it 
more  closely. 

The  argument  as  it  stands  is  one  of  the  most 
common  types  of  fallacy.  It  says,  "  The  colonial 
college  prepared  men  for  the  ministry ;  hence  it  did 
nothing  else.  It  is  the  argument  "  a  is  b,  hence 
a  is  only  b,"  or  again,  it  is,  "  if  an  object  have 
a  given  quality,  then  it  has  no  other  quality." 
"  Charles  Darwin  was  an  Englishman,  hence  of 
course  he  was  not  a  biologist."  "  Spinoza  was  a 
grinder  of  lenses,  hence  he  cannot  have  been  a 
philosopher."  But  Darwin  was  a  biologist  in  spite 
of  the  argument;  and  Spinoza  did  dominate  the 
thought  of  Europe,  even  while  grinding  lenses  in 
his  garret.  The  trouble  with  the  argument  is  that 
the  conclusion  does  not  follow;  there  is  no  logical 
connection  between  conclusion  and  premise.  A 
may  be  b  and  yet  be  also  c  and  d  and  e  as  well.  A 
college  may  be  a  good  place  for  a  young  man  who 
plans  to  enter  the  ministry  and  may  yet  have  quali- 
ties and  purposes  of  which  that  statement  is  in 
no  sense  an  adequate  description.  It  may  well  be 
that  its  value  for  ministerial  students  is  only  one 
phase  of  its  total  and  fundamental  function.  That 
this  is  true  is  already  apparent  from  its  appeal  to 
students  of  other  professions.    If  we  can  now  de- 


^iHE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    161 

fine  this  total  appeal,  the  confusion  should  dis- 
appear and  the  modicum  of  truth  which  the  argu- 
ment contains  should  separate  itself  out  from  the 
vast  error  in  which  that  truth  has  been  involved. 

The  real  motive  of  the  founders  of  the  early  col- 
leges, so  far  as  it  concerned  students  for  the  min- 
istry, appears  in  the  account  given  by  Walter 
Cochrane  Bronson  in  his  History  of  Brown  Uni- 
versity. The  Baptists,  he  tells  us,  were  eager  to 
have  a  coUege  under  their  own  control,  to  which 
their  ministerial  students  might  go.  But  why? 
Was  it  because  they  were  not  sufficiently  supplied 
with  ministers,  or  that  the  candidates  were  unable 
to  secure  the  technical  training  needed  for  their 
profession.''  Not  at  aU.  The  reason,  he  tells  us, 
was  that  at  the  time  Brown  was  established  "  there 
were  only  two  Baptist  ministers  in  all  New  Eng- 
land who  had  what  is  called  a  liberal  education; 
and  they  were  not  clear  in  the  doctrines  of  grace." 
Now  in  accordance  with  the  custom  of  the  time, 
the  leaders  of  the  denomination  could  easily  pro- 
vide for  the  professional  training  of  their  boys  by 
placing  them  in  the  charge  of  older  men  who 
regularly  gave  such  instruction  to  their  appren- 
tices. But  they  recognized  that  the  denomination 
could  not  hold  its  own,  could  not  achieve  its  pur- 
pose in  the  community  unless  its  ministers  were 
men  of  power  and  intelligence,  men  who  could  lead 
and  dominate  the  men  about  them.     And  so  the 


163       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

Baptist  Church  provided  for  the  education  of  its 
young  men  who  were  candidates  for  the  ministry. 
Did  it  provide  for  their  technical  theological  in- 
struction? The  charter  of  the  college  specifically 
denies  this.  The  purpose  was  to  educate  minis- 
ters,— ^but  in  what  sense?  Our  opponents  have 
interpreted  the  purpose  as  that  of  educating  men 
to  be  ministers.  The  real  purpose  was  that  of 
educating  ministers  to  be  men.  And  at  the  same 
time  by  the  same  methods  they  were  educating 
lawyers  to  be  men,  and  teachers,  physicians,  and 
business  men  to  be  men.  The  same  argument  which 
proves  the  old  college  to  have  been  a  divinity  school 
would  prove  it  to  be  a  law  school,  a  medical  school, 
a  school  of  pedagogy,  a  business  school.  But  the 
argument  proves  too  much.  There  is  a  limit  to  the 
number  of  different  things  a  single  thing  can  be. 
The  old  college  did  educate  ministers  just  as  it 
educated  candidates  for  other  professions,  but  it 
did  not  give  to  each  of  these  groups  a  different 
education.  It  was  dealing  with  something  common 
to  them  all,  and  so  it  gave  to  them  all  the  same 
instruction, — the  culture  of  a  liberal  education. 

I  think  it  is  clear  that  the  issue  we  are  discuss- 
ing rests  upon  the  interpretation  of  a  phrase — 
"  founded  for  the  education  of  ministers."  There 
is  no  doubt  that  the  phrase  expresses  in  large  meas- 
ure the  purpose  of  the  early  colleges.  But  what 
does  it  mean  ?    It  is  amazing  to  see  how,  in  the  face 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    163 

of  definite  records  to  the  contrary,  this  statement 
has  been  taken  to  mean  that  the  colleges  were 
schools  of  divinity.  But  the  phrase  admits  of  an- 
other interpretation  which  has  the  advantage  of 
agreeing  with  the  records.  What  does  it  mean  to 
teach  a  minister?  Does  it  mean  only  to  teach  him 
to  be  a  minister?  He  has  many  other  things  to 
leam  besides  that.  He  is  taught  by  his  wife, 
taught  by  his  children,  by  his  friends,  and  by  his 
enemies.  But  the  caddie  who  teaches  him  to  play 
golf  does  not  thereby  become  a  member  of  a  faculty 
of  divinity;  he  may  even  not  be  a  professor  of  re- 
ligion. A  school  for  the  deaf  does  not  necessarily 
teach  deafness,  nor  does  a  school  for  foreigners 
usually  teach  them  to  be  foreign.  A  school  for 
anybody  may  undertake  to  teach  him  what  he  needs 
to  know.  Our  colonial  forefathers  were  persuaded 
that  ministers  as  well  as  other  men  need  knowl- 
edge of  things  outside  their  profession,  need  knowl- 
edge of  the  arts  and  sciences,  and  it  was  that  belief 
which  found  expression  in  the  colleges  which  they 
established. 

The  argument  which  we  have  been  attacking  has 
told  us  to  follow  the  example  of  the  colonial  col- 
lege. If  I  understand  at  all  the  purpose  of  the 
modem  liberal  college  that  is  just  what  it  is  doing. 
There  is  a  vast  difference  in  intellectual  content  as 
between  the  old  college  and  the  new,  but  the  two 
institutions  are  at  one  in  the  belief  in  the  value 


164       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

of  knowledge  as  the  guide  of  human  hfe,  and  in 
the  conviction  that  certain  elements  of  knowledge 
are  of  common  value  to  all  men  whatever  their 
differences  of  occupation  or  trade. 

I  should  like  to  have  the  privilege  of  attempting 
one  last  restatement  of  this  conviction  in  positive 
terms  before  this  paper  is  closed. 

In  the  old  colonial  community,  the  clergyman, 
as  in  lesser  degree  the  lawyer  and  the  teacher,  was 
the  man  of  ideas.  He  was  no  mere  teacher  of  the 
gospel  and  tender  of  the  parish.  While  his  people 
lived  their  lives  it  was  his  task  to  reflect  upon  their 
living,  to  formulate  the  beliefs  on  which  it  was 
based,  to  study  the  conditions  by  which  it  was 
molded,  to  bring  to  clearness  the  problems  by 
which  it  was  faced,  to  study  the  moral,  social, 
economic,  political  situations  of  which  it  was  con- 
stituted. It  was  his  part  and  the  part  of  men  of 
like  intellectual  development  to  attempt  to  under- 
stand the  lives  which  other  men  were  living  with 
lesser  degrees  of  understanding.  It  was  his  task 
to  serve  as  prophet  and  seer,  as  guide  and  coun- 
selor of  his  people. 

It  was  for  this  task  that  the  liberal  college  in- 
tended to  prepare  him.  And  in  these  latter  days, 
as  the  scope  of  education  has  been  extended  more 
and  more  broadly,  the  same  liberal  education  has 
been  given  to  great  numbers  of  our  young  men, 
whatever  the   professions    they   are   planning  to 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    165 

enter.  At  the  present  time  a  very  small  percent- 
age of  our  college  graduates  become  ministers ; 
more  than  half  of  them  enter  into  some  form  of 
business  occupation.  But  whether  they  are  to  be 
in  business  or  in  the  ministry,  the  same  education 
must  be  given  them,  since  the  new  community  has 
the  same  need  as  had  the  old  of  understanding 
itself,  of  stating  itself  in  terms  of  ideas. 

This  fundamental  belief  of  liberal  education  can 
be  stated  in  terms  of  two  principles.  The  first  is 
shared  by  both  liberal  and  technical  teaching.  The 
second  applies  to  liberal  education  alone.  The 
principles  are  these:  (1)  that  activity  guided  by 
ideas  is  on  the  whole  more  successful  than  the  same 
activity  without  the  control  of  ideas,  and  (2)  that 
in  the  activities  common  to  all  men  the  guidance  by 
ideas  is  quite  as  essential  as  in  the  case  of  those 
which  different  groups  of  men  carry  on  in  differen- 
tiation from  one  another. 

The  first  principle  applies  to  all  higher  educa- 
tion. We  recognize  that  human  deeds  may  be  done 
in  either  of  two  ways, — ^first,  by  habit,  by  custom, 
by  tradition,  by  rule  of  thumb,  just  as  they  always 
have  been  done;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  under  the 
guidance  of  study,  of  investigation,  of  ideas  and 
principles  by  which  men  attempt  to  discover  and 
to  formulate  knowledge  as  to  how  these  activities 
can  best  be  done.  Now  all  higher  education,  liberal 
or  professional,  rests  on  the  belief  that  on  the 


166       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

whole  an  activity  which  is  understood  will  be  more 
successful  than  one  which  is  not  understood. 
Knowledge  pays ;  intelligence  is  power. 

The  liberal  school  and  the  professional  are,  how- 
ever, separated  by  their  choice  of  the  activities 
which  each  shall  study.  Every  professional  school 
selects  some  one  special  group  of  activities  carried 
on  by  the  members  of  one  special  trade  or  occupa- 
tion and  brings  to  the  furtherance  of  these  the 
full  light  of  intellectual  understanding  and  guid- 
ance. The  liberal  school,  on  the  other  hand,  takes 
as  its  content  those  activities  which  all  men  carry 
on,  those  deeds  which  a  man  must  do  in  virtue  of 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  man ;  and  within  this  field  it 
seeks  to  achieve  the  same  enlightenment  and  in- 
sight. The  liberal  college  would  learn  and  teach 
what  can  be  known  about  a  man's  moral  experience, 
our  common  speech,  our  social  relations,  our  politi- 
cal institutions,  our  religious  aspirations  and  be- 
liefs, the  world  of  nature  which  surrounds  and 
molds  us,  our  intellectual  and  aesthetic  strivings 
and  yearnings — all  these,  the  human  things  that 
all  men  share,  the  liberal  school  attempts  to 
understand,  believing  that  if  they  are  understood, 
men  can  live  them  better  than  they  would  live 
them  by  mere  tradition  and  blind  custom.  But 
one  of  the  terrible  things  about  our  generation 
is  that  the  principle  which  it  accepts  so  eagerly 
in    the    field    of    the    vocations    it    refuses    and 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    167 

shuns  in  the  deeper  things  of  human  living.  I 
have  known  fathers,  planning  for  the  training  of 
a  son,  who  would  see  to  it  that  in  the  preparation 
for  his  trade  every  bit  of  knowledge  he  can  have  is 
supplied  him.  If  the  boy  is  to  be  a  dyer  of  cloth, 
then  he  must  study  the  sciences  that  understand 
that  process.  All  that  can  be  known  about  the  na- 
ture of  fabrics,  the  constitution  of  dyestuffs,  the 
processes  of  application  and  development  of  the 
dye — not  one  bit  of  all  this  may  be  lacking  from 
the  teaching  of  the  boy.  To  put  him  into  the  shop 
without  that  knowledge,  to  let  him  learn  by  imita- 
tion, pick  up  the  rule  of  thumb,  follow  the  ways  of 
master  workmen  of  the  trade — to  do  that  would  be 
to  make  him  only  a  workman,  one  who  can  do  what 
has  been  done,  can  do  what  he  is  told  to  do.  But 
the  father  is  not  content  with  this.  His  boy  must 
understand  and  know  the  trade  so  that  he  may  be 
the  leader  and  the  guide,  may  give  the  orders  rather 
than  obey  them.  But  how  often  the  same  father  is 
unwilling  that  his  boy  attempt  to  understand  his 
own  religion,  his  own  morals,  his  own  society,  his 
own  politics!  In  these  fields,  surely  the  father's 
opinions  are  good  enough!  Keep  the  boy's  mind 
at  rest  regarding  his  religion  and  his  economics ; 
what  has  been  believed  before  had  better  still  be 
believed!  It  may  be  bad  for  business,  may  inter- 
fere with  a  boy's  success  if  he  becomes  too  much 
interested  in  the  fundamental  things  of  life !    And 


168       ALEXANDER  MEIKLEJOHN 

so  such  parents  invite  us  to  leave  the  universal 
things,  the  things  most  sacred  and  significant,  to 
blindness,  to  the  mere  drift  of  custom,  to  tradi- 
tion, and  rule  of  thumb.  And  here  it  is  that  the 
liberal  college  again  asserts  its  loyalty  to  the  men 
who  founded  the  older  institutions.  Those  men 
had  intellectual  faith ;  they  believed  that  it  is  worth 
while  to  know  the  life  of  man,  and  so  they  studied 
it  and  taught  it  to  their  pupils.  I  know  that  I 
speak  for  the  teachers  and  the  administrators  of 
the  liberal  college  here  represented  to-day  when  I 
pledge  anew  our  loyalty  to  the  men  in  whose  foot- 
steps we  follow.  So  far  as  we  can  bring  it  about 
the  young  people  of  our  generation  shall  know 
themselves,  shall  know  their  fellows,  shall  think 
their  way  into  the  common  life  of  their  people, 
and  by  their  thought  shall  illumine  and  direct  it. 
If  we  are  not  pledged  to  that,  then  we  have  deserted 
the  old  standard ;  we  are  apostates  from  the  faith. 
But  I  think  that  a  good  many  of  us  are  still  loyal. 
We  welcome  every  new  extension  of  vocational  in- 
struction. We  know  that  every  man  should  have 
some  special  task  to  do  and  should  be  trained  to  do 
that  task  as  well  as  it  can  possibly  be  done.  The 
more  the  special  trades  and  occupations  are  guided 
and  directed  by  skill  and  knowledge  the  more  will 
human  life  succeed  in  doing  the  things  it  plans  to 
do.  But  by  the  same  principle  we  pledge  our- 
selves to  the  study  of  the  universal  things  in  human 


THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  COLLEGE    169 

life,  the  things  that  make  us  men  as  well  as  min- 
isters and  tradesmen.  We  pledge  ourselves  for- 
ever to  the  study  of  human  living  in  order  that 
living  may  be  better  done.  We  have  not  yet  for- 
gotten that  fundamentally  the  proper  study  of 
mankind  is  Man. 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE  IN  THE 

LIFE  OF  THE  AMERICAN 

PEOPLE 

COMMISSIONER  PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

Feom  the  beginning  we  of  the  United  States 
have  believed  in  the  education  of  the  college  no 
less  than  in  that  of  the  elementary  school.    North 
and   South   and  in  the  ever-expanding  West  as 
our  frontier  has  moved  across  the  continent,  we 
have  felt  the  need  of  men  and  women  with  the 
education   of   the    college    for   social,   industrial, 
civic,  and  religious  leadership.    The  consciousness 
of  this  need  has  become  clearer  as  industries  have 
become  more  numerous  and  extensive,  church  more 
free,  religion  more  comprehensive,  and  society  and 
state  more  democratic.    Scientific  discovery,  labor- 
saving  invention,  commercial  expansion,  facility  of 
travel  and  intercourse,  literary  activity  and  the 
growth  of  the  spirit  of  criticism  have  brought 
a  clearer  recognition  of  the  value  of  all  education. 
Increase  in  wealth,  most  rapid  in  the  last  half 
century,  has  made  it  possible  for  us  to  establish 
and  maintain  schools  in  some  degree  at  least  in 
proportion  to  our  recognition  of  their  value. 
171 


173         PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

True  to  our  Anglo-Saxon  ideals,  we  have  in  our 
efforts  to  supply  our  need  for  schools  welcomed 
the    assistance,    alike,    of    individuals,    churches, 
benevolent  societies,  and  of  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment,   States,    and    smaller    political   units.      All 
these   agencies  have   worked   in  generous   rivalry 
and  with  hearty  good  will  towards  one  common  aim. 
Public   and   private   schools,   of  whatever  grade, 
have  all  been  schools  of  and  for  the  people.    They 
have  differed  chiefly  in  their  means  of  support.    In 
a  very  real  sense  all  our  schools  have  been  and  are 
public   schools.      In    reality   we   have   no   private 
schools.    Whatever  the  source  of  their  income  and 
the  form  of  their  control,  all  our  schools  have  been 
and  are,  in  all  things  essential,  governed  by  public 
opinion  and  popular  sentiment,  the  great  control- 
ling forces  in  all  democracies.    Their  only  purpose 
and  function  have  been  and  are  to  serve  the  public 
by  preparing  children  and  youth  for  life,  for  wise 
and  noble  living,  for  intelligent  useful  work,  for 
the  duties  and  responsibilities  of  citizenship,  and 
in  so  far  as  may  be,  for  eternal  destiny.     It  is 
the  glory  of  our  schools  that  they  exclude  none 
because  of  social  rank,  religious  creed,  partisan 
political  affiliations,  economic  conditions,  or  race. 
Private  schools,  even  the  most  select,  seldom  ex- 
clude any  who  will  conform  to  their  standards  of 
conduct.      Church   schools   welcome  youth  of  all 
creeds  and  of  none.     For  the  poor  there  are  free 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         173 

tuition,  scholarships  paying  all  or  part  of  their 
expenses  for  living,  loan  funds  on  the  most  liberal 
terms,  and  opportunities  to  pay  their  way  by  labor 
of  many  kinds.  Fortunately  all  kinds  of  useful 
labor  done  with  worthy  purpose  are  regarded  as 
honorable.  Social  recognition  and  highest  honors 
frequently  go  to  those  who  pay  their  way  even  by 
menial  service.  Even  in  those  States  in  which 
white  and  colored  children  must  attend  separate 
schools,  there  are  schools  for  all,  and  the  tendency 
grows  stronger  from  year  to  year  to  make  the 
schools  for  the  children  and  grandchildren  of 
former  slaves  as  nearly  as  possible  equal  in  effi- 
ciency to  the  schools  maintained  for  the  children 
and  grandchildren  of  the  former  masters.  Demo- 
cratic, or  striving  to  be  democratic,  in  all  else, 
we  are  striving  to  be  democratic  in  education  also; 
and  our  democracy  grows  broader  and  stronger 
and  finer  and  richer  and  more  tolerant  and  more 
all-pervasive  as  the  years  go  by. 

Is  it  too  much  to  claim  for  the  American  college 
that  it  has  been  the  chief  force  in  our  American 
life  making  for  industrial  efficiency,  economic  de- 
velopment, sane  and  safe  democracy,  social  purity 
and  refinement,  religious  freedom,  spiritual  culture, 
and  higher  idealism?  In  the  upward  striving  and 
onward  march  of  the  American  people  from  the 
time  when  a  few  thousands,  mostly  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  the  poor,  landed  on  the  shores  of  Virginia 


174  PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

and  New  England  till  now,  when  after  three  short 
centuries  they  fill  the  space  between  the  double 
oceans,  a  hundred  million  strong,  peoples  from  all 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  of  all  creeds,  tongues,  and 
races,  living  in  peace  in  half  a  hundred  self-govern- 
ing States,  united  in  one  great  democratic  republic, 
the  freest,  strongest,  and  wealthiest,  and  most  pro- 
gressive nation  the  world  has  ever  known,  the  col- 
leges have  played  their  part  faithfully  and  well. 
Without  them  and  their  influence  the  story  of  our 
life  would  have  been  quite  different  in  most  par- 
ticulars. How  different,  it  is  impossible  to  imag- 
ine. Read  the  story  of  religious  leadership  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  Call  the  roll 
of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
of  the  Continental  Congress,  and  of  the  Constitu- 
tional Convention.  Visit  the  halls  of  the  College 
of  William  and  Mary,  Princeton,  Columbia,  Yale, 
and  Harvard,  and  note  how  many  of  the  leaders 
in  the  great  events  connected  with  the  birth  of  the 
nation  are  claimed  as  their  sons. 

Through  Washington,  Jefferson,  Hamilton, 
Madison,  Monroe,  the  Adamses,  Webster,  Calhoun, 
Benton;  Cooper,  Bryant,  Longfellow,  Lowell, 
Hawthorne,  Bancroft,  Motley,  Taylor,  Emerson, 
Lanier;  Gray,  Dana,  Leconte;  Parker,  Dwight, 
Beecher ;  Whitney,  Morse,  and  hundreds  of  others 
of  their  day  and  later  whose  names  are  known  to 
all,  the  colleges  have  made  direct  contributions  of 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         176 

incalculable  value  to  all  phases  of  American  life. 
But  the  contributions  made  through  the  lives  of 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  their  students  less  well 
known,  and  by  their  indirect  influence  on  the  lives 
of  millions  of  earnest  men  and  women  who  never 
entered  their  halls,  have  been  greater  still.  Great- 
est of  all  has  been  the  influence  of  the  spirit  of 
freedom  and  democracy,  idealism  and  service,  and 
devotion  to  truth  which  has  pervaded  them  all  and 
inspired  the  communities  to  which  they  have  min- 
istered. In  plain  living  and  high  thinking  the 
colleges  and  college  men  and  women  have  led  the 
way. 

Not  two  decades  had  gone  by  since  the  first 
landing  of  the  pilgrims  in  New  England,  and 
the  colony  was  stiU  small  and  weak,  and,  but  for 
the  sterling  character,  strong  faith,  and  fixed  pur- 
pose of  the  colonists,  still  uncertain  as  to  its  fu- 
ture, when  the  school  was  founded  which  later 
became  Harvard  College  and  Harvard  University. 
For  many  decades  Harvard  was  a  typical  small 
college,  with  cheap  buildings,  little  equipment, 
meager  income,  small  faculty,  and  few  students.  It 
was  rich  only  in  the  love  and  devotion  of  its  friends, 
its  idealism,  and  its  purposes.  But  the  Harvard 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  even  its  poverty,  served 
the  pioneer  people  of  this  Eastern  coast  and  met 
their  demands  as  hundreds  of  small  and  strug- 
gling pioneer  colleges,  some  of  them  struggling 


176         PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

unto  death,  served  fresh  water  and  backwoods 
communities  through  two  centuries  of  pioneer  life. 

The  population  of  Virginia  was  stiU  small, 
though  its  territory  was  large  and  indefinite 
enough,  when  Their  Majesties'  Royal  College  of 
William  and  Mary  was  founded  in  1693,  to  become 
in  the  next  century  the  training  ground  of  democ- 
racy, the  inspiration  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, and  the  inalienable  rights  of  man.  Only 
these  two,  Harvard  and  William  and  Mary,  sur- 
vive from  the  seventeenth  century.  From  the  first 
quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  we  have  Yale 
and  Washington  College,  in  Maryland.  From  the 
second  quarter  we  have  the  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania, the  Moravian  Seminary  and  College  for 
Women  in  Pennsylvania,  Princeton,  originating 
in  the  "  Log  College,"  and  Washington  and  Lee, 
known  in  those  days  as  Liberty  Hall.  From  the 
third  quarter  we  have  Columbia  (Kings  College), 
Brown,  Rutgers,  and  Dartmouth.  These  twelve 
antedate  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution. 

From  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  we  have 
Hampden-Sidney,  Washington  and  Jefferson, 
Dickinson,  University  of  Pittsburgh,  Georgetown, 
St.  John's  College,  The  College  of  Charleston, 
Williams,  Tusculum,  Blount  (now  the  University 
of  Tennessee),  Washington  (the  last  three  founded 
in  the  same  year  and  all  in  the  valley  of  East 
Tennessee),  Union,  University  of  North  Carolina, 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         177 

Transylvania,  Marietta,  University  of  Vermont, 
and  Middlebury.  A  total  of  seventeen  survive 
from  these  twenty-five  years  of  revolution  and  the 
inauguration  of  our  government.  This  fact  alone, 
that  during  these  twenty-five  years  of  stirring 
events  our  fathers  established  almost  a  score  of 
colleges  that  have  lived  and  grown  until  now,  is 
sufficient  evidence  of  their  belief  in  the  value  of  the 
college  in  a  democracy  of  the  kind  they  were  try- 
ing to  build.  At  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  there  were  twenty-nine  schools  which  are 
still  counted  among  our  colleges  and  universities, 
and  there  were  probably  as  many  others  which 
no  longer  exist.  Not  a  bad  showing  for  a  strug- 
gling group  of  pioneer  rural  States  with  a  total 
population  of  little  more  than  five  millions.  It  is 
significant  that  five  of  the  twenty-five  were  west 
of  the  Alleghanies.  Of  the  twenty-seven  which 
date  from  the  eighteenth  century  three  are  now 
State  universities. 

Continuing  our  count,  from  the  first  quarter  of 
the  nineteenth  century  we  again  have  twenty-nine, 
ten  of  which  are  west  of  the  Alleghanies.  Among 
them  is  Allegheny  College,  fortieth  in  the  list. 
Five  of  the  twenty-nine  are  now  State  schools. 
From  the  second  quarter  of  this  century  we  have 
lis,  of  which  nine  are  State  or  National  schools, 
and  from  the  next  decade  ninety-one,  of  which  five 
are  State  schools.    Of  the  567  colleges  and  univer- 


178  PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

sities  reporting  to  the  Bureau  of  Education  in 
1914,  262  had  their  beginning  before  the  war  be- 
tween the  States.     The  decade  of  the  war  and  re- 
construction gives  us  eighty-two,  of  which  fifteen 
are  State  or  National.     The  large  increase  in  the 
number  of  State  schools  in  this  and  the  following 
decade  is  due  in  large  measure  to  the  passage  of 
the  First  Morrill  Act  in  1862,  appropriating  pub- 
lic lands  for  the  use  of  Colleges  of  Agriculture 
and  Mechanic  Arts.     This  Act  gave  impetus  to 
the  growing  sentiment  for  public  education  and 
schools  of  all  grades  free  to  all  and  supported  by 
public  taxation.     From  the  next  three  decades  we 
have  eighty-two,  sixty-seven,  and  eighty-six,  re- 
spectively, and  from  the  last  decade  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  fifty-six,  a  total  of  291  for  the 
four  decades,  fifty  of  them  State,  National,  munic- 
ipal,   or    distinctly    technical.      From    the    first 
decade   of   the   twentieth   century  we  have   only 
twenty-seven  new  institutions,   of  which  six   are 
State  or  technical,  and  from  the  next  four  years 
only  four,  of  which  one  is  a  university  with  no 
college  department  yet  organized. 

These  are  the  numbers  of  those  which  survive. 
Some  have  died,  some  have  been  united  with  other 
schools,  some  have  given  up  the  struggle  to  main- 
tain themselves  as  colleges  and  have  taken  names 
which  indicate  more  accurately  the  work  they  do. 
There  are  still  some  that  call  themselves  colleges 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         179 

or  universities  but  are  not  listed  as  such  by  the 
Bureau  of  Education. 

That  we  have  had  and  still  have  more  colleges 
than  we  need,  that  many  have  been  founded  un- 
wisely, that  many  have,  because  of  lack  of  means, 
been  unable  to  do  the  work  they  honestly  tried  to 
do,  that  many  have  functioned  chiefly  in  boom- 
ing real  estate — all  may  be  conceded.  But  what 
does  it  matter?  This  kind  of  extravagance  is 
probably  inseparable  from  a  young  and  exuberant 
democracy  such  as  ours  has  been.  All  have  served 
a  good  purpose.  Even  the  fake  institutions  have 
served  to  develop  the  critical  spirit,  and  their 
power  to  deceive  is  a  tribute  to  the  faith  which 
the  people  have  in  the  college  and  the  things  for 
which  it  stands. 

In  the  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Educa- 
tion for  1892,  600  colleges  are  listed;  in  the 
Report  for  1895,  694 ;  for  1900,  677 ;  for  1905, 
633 ;  for  1910,  618 ;  for  1914,  567,  an  average  now 
of  one  college  for  175,000  of  total  population. 
The  number  of  colleges  will  probably  continue  to 
grow  less  for  many  years.  A  word  later  about 
the  reasons  for  this. 

Of  the  567  colleges  listed  in  the  Report  of  the 
Commissioner  of  Education  for  1914,  ninety-five 
are  under  National,  State,  or  municipal  control; 
thirty-two  are  under  denominational  control,  and 
144  are  non-sectarian.     Ninety-two  are  colleges 


180         PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

for  women,  145  are  colleges  for  men,  and  330  are 
co-educational. 

So  much  for  the  colleges  of  the  past  and  the 
present.  It  would  be  a  pleasant  task  to  dwell  on 
the  various  phases  of  their  work  and  of  their 
benign  influence  on  American  life.  But  their  past 
is  safe,  and  I  am  just  now  more  interested  in  their 
future.  What  changes  are  necessary  to  enable  our 
colleges  to  adjust  themselves  to  the  new  conditions 
and  demands  which  have  arisen,  to  use  their  means 
and  energies  more  economically,  and  to  render  full- 
est and  best  service  in  the  larger  and  more  com- 
plex life  upon  which  we  have  entered? 

First.  I  suggest  that  the  colleges  which  have 
preparatory  departments  should  begin  at  once  to 
prepare  to  abandon  them  or  to  organize  them  as 
separate  schools,  with  their  own  teachers  and  de- 
pendent upon  their  own  resources. 

There  was  a  time  when  there  was  need  for  the 
preparatory  school  or  department  at  all  or  most 
colleges.  Schools  in  which  boys  and  girls  could 
be  prepared  for  admission  to  any  college  with 
respectable  standards  were  few.  The  public  high 
schools  of  four  years  based  on  eight  years  of  ele- 
mentary schooling  are  of  recent  date.  There  was 
a  large  gap  between  the  work  of  the  public  schools 
in  most  communities  and  the  work  of  the  fresh- 
man class  in  any  good  college.  Private  prepara- 
tory schools  were  costly  and  many  were  inefficient 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         181 

and  unsatisfactory.  But  these  conditions  have 
changed  rapidly  in  the  last  fifteen  years.  There 
are  now  in  the  United  States  nearly  fourteen  thou- 
sand public  and  private  high  schools,  fully  ten 
thousand  of  which  have  courses  of  full  four  years. 
These  are  found  in  cities,  towns,  and  rural  com- 
munities alike.  In  the  ten  thousand  four-year 
high  schools  are  enrolled  more  than  a  million  stu- 
dents. Many  of  these  high  schools  are  better 
equipped  with  buildings,  laboratories,  and  teach- 
ers than  most  of  our  colleges  were  a  generation 
ago.  Practically  all  are  capable  of  giving  the 
preparation  required  for  admission  at  most  col- 
leges. If  some  of  the  public  high  schools  fail  to 
give  the  desired  amount  of  Latin  or  Greek,  they 
give  more  of  other  subjects;  and  most  of  the  pri- 
vate high  schools,  of  which  there  are  more  than 
two  thousand,  are  able  to  give  full  preparation  in 
these  languages.  For  many  reasons  the  public  and 
private  high  schools  are  better  and  more  desirable 
than  the  preparatory  schools  of  the  colleges. 

Still  354<  church  and  non-sectarian  colleges  re- 
port preparatory  departments  with  approximately 
forty- three  thousand  preparatory  students.  The 
same  colleges  enroll  less  than  sixty  thousand  regu- 
lar college  students.  The  total  number  of  their 
preparatory  students  is  more  than  two-thirds  the 
number  of  their  regular  college  students.  In 
many  colleges  the  number  of  preparatory  students 


182         PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

is  two,  three,  four,  or  five  times  the  number  of 
college  students.  Why  should  these  colleges  con- 
tinue to  divide  their  means  and  energies  and  bring 
more  or  less  confusion  into  their  work  that  they 
may  add  354*  high  schools  to  the  fourteen  thou- 
sand which  we  already  have,  more  than  ten  thou- 
sand with  courses  of  four  years,  and  give  to  forty- 
three  thousand  boys  and  girls  instruction  little  dif- 
ferent from  that  received  by  a  million  and  a  quar- 
ter other  boys  and  girls  in  the  high  schools? 

These  colleges  are  as  a  rule  not  among  the 
stronger  and  richer.  Most  of  them  have  much 
less  income  and  equipment  than  they  need  for 
their  legitimate  college  work.  Many  of  them  have 
lower  standards  of  admission  than  are  justified  by 
the  work  now  done  by  the  better  public  and  private 
high  schools.  Some  of  them  admit  students  to  their 
freshman  classes  with  much  less  preparation  than 
can  be  had  in  the  high  schools.  Of  the  ninety-two 
colleges  for  women,  sixty-eight  maintain  prepara- 
tory departments.  These  report  6,873  prepar- 
atory and  8,045  regular  college  students.  Prac- 
tically all  these  colleges  have  very  meager  incomes. 
Why  should  they  stint  their  college  work  that  they 
may  add  sixty-eight  to  more  than  ten  thousand  high 
schools  open  to  girls  and  able  to  prepare  them  for 
admission  to  the  freshman  class  of  any  of  these  col- 
leges ?  The  eight  thousand  students  in  their  prepar- 
atory classes  is  inconsiderable  in  comparison  with 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         183 

the  seven  hundred  thousand  girls  in  the  public 
and  private  high  schools.  And  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  many,  probably  most  of  the  students  in 
the  preparatory  classes  of  colleges  of  all  kinds, 
never  enter  the  college  proper.  To  the  extent  that 
this  is  true  they  are  not  in  reality  preparatory 
schools,  but  only  abnormal  high  schools  for  general 
education. 

Nor  are  most  or  all  these  colleges  with  prepara- 
tory departments  found  in  the  States  which  have 
fewest  good  high  schools.  Iowa  reports  592  public 
high  schools  with  45,877  students  and  85  private 
high  schools  with  3,614  students,  yet  £1  Iowa 
colleges  report  preparatory  departments  with  a 
total  of  1,820  students.  The  same  colleges  report 
less  than  twice  this  number  of  regular  college  stu- 
dents, and  all  need  larger  incomes  and  better 
equipment  for  their  legitimate  college  work. 
Pennsylvania  reports  886  public  high  schools  with 
enrollment  of  84,453  students,  and  138  pri- 
vate high  schools  with  12,935  students.  But  22 
Pennsylvania  colleges  maintain  preparatory  de- 
partments for  2,601  students.  Ohio  reports  811' 
public  high  schools  with  77,324  students,  and  75 
private  high  schools  with  4,336  students,  yet  28 
Ohio  colleges  support  preparatory  departments 
for  3,039  high-school  students.  New  York  reports 
666  public  high  schools  with  133,736  students,  and 
237  private  high  schools  with  17,081  students,  yet 


184j         philander  P.  CLAXTON 

11  New  York  colleges  give  some  kind  of  high- 
school  education  to  3,393  boys  and  girls  in  their 
preparatory  departments.  Eleven  Indiana  col- 
leges, 27  Illinois  colleges,  26  Missouri  colleges  have 
preparatory  departments.  There  seems  to  be  no 
longer  any  good  reason  for  this  policy,  however 
necessary  it  may  have  been  formerly. 

Second.  All  colleges  which  now  require  for  ad- 
mission less  than  the  preparation  that  can  be  had 
in  four  years  of  good  high-school  work  should 
raise  their  standards  to  this  point  at  once  or  as 
early  as  the  majority  of  the  communities  served  by 
them  can  be  brought  to  maintain  good  high  schools 
with  courses  of  four  years.  There  is  now  little 
reason,  and  there  should  soon  be  none,  why  any 
institution  calling  itself  a  college  should  do  high- 
school  work  or  admit  students  who  have  not  had 
four  years  of  work  in  a  good  high  school  or  its 
equivalent.  Within  the  last  ten  years  and  espe- 
cially within  the  last  five  years  there  has  been 
a  very  general  movement  for  higher  standards. 
Half  the  colleges  of  the  country  or  more  have 
within  these  years  raised  their  standards  of  admis- 
sion, on  paper  at  least,  by  an  amount  represented 
by  one,  two,  or  three  years  of  high-school  work. 
But  not  all  of  these  have  raised  their  standards  of 
graduation  by  an  equal  amount,  and  bachelor  de- 
grees still  have  a  very  uncertain  and  indefinite 
meaning.     There  is  need  of  some  general  agree- 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         185 

ment  as  to  the  terms  on  which  these  degrees  shall  be 
given  and  as  to  what  they  shall  mean. 

Third.  Colleges  requiring  or  accepting  for  ad- 
mission units  in  any  subject  should  build  their 
work  in  that  subject  on  the  work  accepted  for  ad- 
mission, and  not  on  a  smaller  amount.  The  total 
amount  of  work  in  any  subject  should  be  the  sum  of 
the  work  accepted  for  admission  plus  the  full  num- 
ber of  years  of  college  work.  Units  of  prepara- 
tion should  not  be  counted  both  for  admission  and 
for  graduation.  As  nearly  as  possible  college  work 
should  be  in  the  line  of  the  preparatory  work  and 
in  substantial  groups,  so  that  the  colleges  may  be 
relieved  of  the  necessity  of  doing  through  a  series 
of  groups  a  large  amount  of  more  or  less  discon- 
nected high-school  work. 

Fourth.  Two  hundred  or  more  of  the  smaller 
colleges  should,  I  believe,  become  junior  colleges, 
attempting  to  do  only  two  or  three  years  of  col- 
lege work,  preferably  only  two  years.  These 
junior  colleges  should  require  for  admission  the 
same  degree  of  preparation  as  is  required  by  the 
standard  four-year  colleges  and  should  not  attempt 
to  maintain  preparatory  departments.  They 
should,  on  the  other  hand,  concentrate  all  their 
energies,  means,  and  equipment  of  buildings, 
laboratories,  libraries,  and  teaching  force  on  doing 
well  and  in  a  large  and  strong  way  the  work  of 
the  first  two  college  years.     For  the  work  of  in- 


186         PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

struction  they  should  employ  men  and  women  of 
the  best  native  ability,  good  scholarship,  and  the 
highest  skill  in  teaching.  The  instructors  should 
have  a  comprehensive  grasp  of  the  principles  of 
education,  its  aims  and  ends  and  its  relations  to 
life.  They  should  be  whole-souled  men  and  women 
with  sympathy  for  boys  and  girls  at  this  most 
critical  period  of  their  life,  with  high  ideals  and 
power  to  inspire  them  to  the  best.  Here  more 
than  elsewhere  are  needed  teachers  answering  to 
Daniel  Coit  Oilman's  description,  "  tall  men,  broad- 
shouldered  men,  sun-crowned  men,"  or  women  like 
unto  them.  In  these  years  the  personality  of  the 
teacher  probably  counts  for  more  than  at  any  other 
time,  as  did  the  kind  of  personal  contact  which 
students  had  with  the  principal  members  of  the 
faculties  of  the  old-time  colleges,  but  which  they 
no  longer  can  have  in  the  larger  colleges  of  to-day, 
nor  with  men  of  the  highest  ability  in  most  of  the 
smaller  colleges  as  they  are  now  organized.  Ideals, 
inspiration,  desires,  and  enthusiasms  may  count 
for  more  here  than  technical  knowledge  of  sub- 
jects, however  accurate  and  thorough.  For  two 
years  of  college  work  these  schools  with  compara- 
tively small  incomes  might  hope  to  pay  a  few 
teachers  of  the  kind  I  have  tried  to  describe  suf- 
ficient salaries  to  hold  them  for  this  most  impor- 
tant work,  and  to  equip  laboratories  and  libraries 
adequately,  so  that  a  minimum  of  the  time  of  the 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         187 

students  would  be  lost.  The  importance  of  this 
will  be  better  understood  if  it  is  remembered  that 
more  than  sixty  out  of  every  hundred  who  enter 
college  leave  at  or  before  the  end  of  the  second 
year,  never  to  return.  What  college  does  for 
them  must  be  done  in  these  two  years,  for  many  of 
them  in  one  year  only. 

After  finishing  the  two  years  of  the  junior  col- 
lege, students  should,  of  course,  be  advised  to  go  for 
the  last  two  years  of  college  work  to  the  larger  and 
richer  colleges  which  are  able  to  equip  their  labora- 
tories and  libraries  and  to  employ  large  numbers 
of  specialists  for  the  more  technical  work  of  these 
years.  Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  under  these 
conditions  many  more  would  enter  and  remain 
through  these  advanced  classes  than  now  do  or  that 
the  sum  total  of  results  of  the  four  years  in  col- 
lege would  be  much  larger  than  it  now  is  for  most 
students?  For  most  students  the  two  years  of 
junior  college  work  might  be  made  almost  the  full 
equivalent  of  what  is  done  now  in  three  and  the 
better  preparation  and  the  stronger  impulse  gained 
would  insure  better  results  in  the  last  two  years 
also. 

Of  course  this  better  type  of  work  in  the  smaller 
junior  colleges  would  soon  compel  the  larger  col- 
leges to  make  like  provision  for  their  first  and 
second  year  students,  who  are  now  too  often 
crowded  into   over-large   classes   or  sections  and 


188         PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

given  into  the  hands  of  young  and  inexperienced 
teachers  quite  different  from  the  ideal  set  forth 
above  and  seldom  come  in  contact  with  the  larger 
and  more  experienced  men  and  women  who  make  the 
reputation  of  the  colleges.  Some  of  these  younger 
and  more  inexperienced  teachers  do  prove  to  be  men 
and  women  of  the  best  type  and  make  good  when 
they  have  had  more  experience,  but  many  only 
prove  themselves  to  be  unfit. 

That  you  may  understand  still  better  the  need 
for  this  reorganization  of  our  colleges,  let  me 
call  your  attention  to  the  following  significant 
facts : 

In  1892  the  600  colleges  reporting  to  the  Bu- 
reau of  Education  had  property  and  endowment 
amounting  to  $200,541, S75,  a  working  income  of 
$17,034,614,  11,432  professors  and  instructors, 
122,403  students.  In  1914  the  567  reporting  had 
property  and  endowments  amounting  to  $849,296,- 
071,  a  working  income  of  $102,156,401,  31,312 
professors  and  other  instructors,  and  334,978  stu- 
dents. The  increase  in  twenty- two  years  was  more 
than  three  hundred  per  cent,  in  property  and  en- 
dowment, five  hundred  per  cent,  in  working  income, 
nearly  two  hundred  per  cent,  in  instructors  and 
in  students.  The  figures  for  property  and  endow- 
ment and  for  working  income  are  most  remarkable. 
But  most  of  the  increase  in  property  and  in  income 
as  well  as  in  instructors  and  students  has  been  in 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         189 

a  small  per  cent,  of  the  institutions  and  the  differ- 
ences in  wealth  and  size  are  now  much  greater 
than  they  were  twenty-two  years  ago. 

In  1914,  29  colleges  do  not  report  their  incomes, 
and  45  report  incomes  less  than  ten  thousand 
dollars ;  92  report  working  incomes  between  ten 
and  twenty  thousand  dollars,  and  80  between 
twenty  and  thirty  thousand  dollars.  Including 
in  the  count  those  not  reporting  incomes,  as  all 
except  two  or  three  should  be,  we  have  246  col- 
leges with  working  incomes  less  than  thirty  thou- 
sand dollars.  Forty-six  having  working  incomes 
between  thirty  and  forty  thousand  dollars  and  46 
between  forty  and  fifty  thousand  dollars.  There 
were  in  1914,  therefore,  328  colleges  having  work- 
ing incomes  less  than  fifty  thousand  dollars.  Sixty 
per  cent,  of  the  colleges  and  universities  had  six 
per  cent,  of  the  total  of  annual  working  incomes, 
ten  per  cent,  of  the  total  property  and  endowment, 
and  twelve  per  cent,  of  the  college  students ;  forty 
per  cent,  had  ninety-four  per  cent,  of  the  total  of 
working  incomes,  and  eighty-eight  per  cent,  of 
the  students.  Twenty-six  institutions,  each  having 
$600,000  or  more  working  income,  had  thirty-six 
per  cent,  of  the  total  of  working  incomes,  and 
eighteen  per  cent,  of  the  students.  Again,  ninety- 
three  of  the  colleges  having  working  incomes  less 
than  fifty  thousand  dollars  had  less  than  fifty  regu- 
lar college  students  each  and  ninety-nine  had  more 


190         PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

than  fifty  but  not  more  than  one  hundred  such  stu- 
dents, a  total  of  192  colleges  with  not  more  than 
one  hundred  regular  college  students. 

In  the  average  college  with  60  students  35 
will  be  in  the  first  two  years  and  15  in  the 
last  two.  In  a  college  of  100  students,  70  will  be 
in  the  first  two  and  30  in  the  last  two  years.  The 
expense  for  teaching  the  15  and  the  SO  will 
be  more  than  the  expense  for  teaching  the  35 
and  the  70.  If  the  two  higher  classes  were  sent 
away  to  the  larger  and  richer  colleges,  the  number 
of  students  in  the  lower  classes  might  be  more  than 
doubled  and  the  total  attendance  increased  more 
than  fifty  per  cent,  without  additional  cost  for 
teaching  and  equipment,  and  all  students,  those 
remaining  and  those  sent  away,  would  be  better 
taught.  But  the  better  teaching  in  the  lower 
classes  and  the  larger  number  of  students  attracted 
to  and  held  in  these  classes  thereby  would  result 
in  more  general  support,  larger  endowments,  and 
more  adequate  incomes  for  the  colleges. 

In  most  instances  these  junior  colleges  should 
be  affiliated  more  or  less  closely  with  one  or  more 
stronger  colleges  to  which  they  would  send  most 
of  their  students.  Many  students  from  the  same 
junior  college  would  thus  find  themselves  in 
the  higher  classes  of  the  same  institution,  and 
would  rejoice  in  keeping  up  in  the  larger  institu- 
tion the  spirit  of  the  college  from  which  they  came 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         191 

and  in  which  they  received  their  ideals  and  inspira- 
tions. They  would  think  of  themselves,  both  while 
in  the  senior  college  and  in  after  life,  as  of  the 
college  in  which  they  spent  the  earlier  years  of 
their  college  Hfe.  Thus  the  junior  coUege  need 
not  fear  losing  its  place  in  the  affections  of  its 
students. 

I  have  dwelt  on  this  matter  of  the  junior  college 
because  it  seems  to  me  to  be  a  matter  of  very 
great  importance  and  because  I  know  how  difficult 
it  is  going  to  be  to  bring  many  institutions  that 
should  transform  themselves  into  junior  colleges 
to  break  away  from  the  traditional  four  years. 
Yet  a  beginning  has  already  been  made  and  there 
are  now  a  score  or  more  junior  colleges  in  the 
country.  Unfortunately  most  of  them  still  do  two 
or  more  years  of  high-school  work.  This  work, 
I  feel  sure,  they  will  abandon  soon.  On  the 
other  hand,  some  of  the  city  high  schools  are 
adding  two  years  of  college  work  and  calling  them- 
selves junior  colleges.  There  are  a  dozen  such  in 
California. 

Fifth.  Fifty  or  seventy-five  colleges  with  in- 
comes between  fifty  and  one  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars should  follow  the  example  of  Allegheny  and 
Amherst  and  limit  themselves  to  one,  two,  or  three 
well-organized  groups  of  subjects,  doing  four 
years  of  earnest  work  in  these,  and  striving  to 
attain  in  them  a  higher  degree  of  excellence  than 


19a  PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 

is  possible  with  the  larger  and  more  diversified 
curricula  of  most  modern  colleges.  If  this  were 
done  students  would  then  be  able  to  select  the  col- 
lege in  which  the  best  opportunities  might  be  had 
in  the  subjects  and  group  of  subjects  in  which 
they  were  most  interested.  Classes  in  the  general 
subjects  would  thus  come  to  be  made  up  of  select 
students.  Abler  instructors  would  be  attracted  by 
the  opportunity  of  doing  better  work  than  can  be 
done  with  classes  in  which  many  of  the  students 
have  no  interest  in  or  ability  for  the  subject.  A 
finer  and  better  spirit  would  pervade  the  entire 
school  and  the  results  obtained  would  be  more 
satisfactory  in  every  way.  Fortunately  this 
is  no  longer  a  matter  of  mere  theory  or  sur- 
mise. The  two  colleges  already  referred  to  and 
some  others  have  already  demonstrated  its  practi- 
cability. 

When  the  readjustments  here  set  forth  have 
been  made,  as  I  believe  they  will  be  made  in  the 
next  few  years ;  when  we  have  reorganized  our 
twelve  years  of  elementary  and  secondary  school- 
ing on  a  basis  of  six  years  of  elementary  and  six 
years  of  high  school,  as  we  are  now  beginning  to 
do ;  when  we  learn  to  promote  teachers  with  their 
classes  in  the  elementary  school  so  as  to  preserve 
the  continuity  of  teaching  from  year  to  year,  as 
we  do  not  do  now,  and  when  we  have  learned  to 
demand  a  little  better  preparation  on  the  part  of 


THE  AMERICAN  COLLEGE         193 

all  teachers  both  in  the  elementary  school  and  in 
the  high  school,  we  shall,  I  feel  sure,  be  able  to 
send  boys  and  girls  to  college  with  the  equivalent 
of  two  years  in  advancement  over  that  which  they 
now  have  and  with  much  greater  power  of  initia- 
tive and  independent  thinking,  and  to  gain  the 
equivalent  of  another  year  in  the  four  years  of  col- 
lege work.  This,  with  the  fuller  development  of  a 
few  of  our  graduate  schools  made  possible  by  their 
large  and  rapidly  increasing  incomes,  and  with  the 
raising  of  standards  in  our  professional  and  tech- 
nical schools,  now  well  under  way,  will  enable  us 
not  only  to  give  better  preparation  to  the  young 
men  and  women  upon  whom  must  rest  the  duties 
and  responsibihties  of  leadership  in  our  own  coun- 
try ;  it  will  also  enable  us  to  rise  to  the  opportunity 
offered  us  and  the  responsibility  thrust  upon  us 
by  what  is  now  taking  place  in  Europe,  and  to 
assume  world  leadership  in  education.  Attract- 
ing to  our  schools  thousands  of  young  men 
and  women  from  all  countries  of  the  world,  we 
shall  be  able  to  inspire  them  with  the  spirit  of  our 
democracy  and  to  teach  them  a  higher  philosophy 
than  they  have  been  able  to  learn  from  the  mili- 
tary despotisms,  aristocracies,  and  feudalisms  of 
the  Old  World. 

Our  own  democratic  republic  with  Its  two  hun- 
dred millions  of  people  and  its  thousand  billions 
of  wealth  within  the  next  fifty  years,  with  its 


194 


PHILANDER  P.  CLAXTON 


larger  and  more  complex  industrial  and  political 
problems  and  its  finer  and  richer  culture,  and  a 
world  civilization  to  be  rebuilt  on  broader  and  safer 
foundation,  call  us  to  the  task  and  hearten  us  for 
its  accomplishment. 


Date  Due 


Wlllilimillllin  ^  FACILITY 

iiiiiiiiii 

A     000  599  840     6 


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JNIVERSITY  OF  CA.,  RIVERSIDE  LIBRARY 


